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NASCAR has Lost Its Soul

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Boom_70, Apr 17, 2007.

  1. novelist_wannabe

    novelist_wannabe Well-Known Member

    Let's just all bend the language to suit our own purposes.

    I'm not a fan at all, and please don't confuse me with being a NASCAR apologist, but .... NASCAR is certainly shorter than "National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing." So I really don't buy the acronyms are supposed to be short argument, either. (I know, you called it bullshit, too). Anhwho, this looks like the NYT making an exception just to prove a point, which smacks of bias. Sure, the acronym stands out in print, but so does NFL (the times uses N.F.L., right?).
     
  2. imjustagirl2

    imjustagirl2 New Member

    He was there, DD.

    I heard the story from two others who were also there.
     
  3. imjustagirl2

    imjustagirl2 New Member

    But the length isn't the reason. As stated above, it's pronounced as a word, hence it's spelled. If the NFL were called the Niffle, it would be spelled Nfl in the Times.
     
  4. 2muchcoffeeman

    2muchcoffeeman Well-Known Member

    ISC wasn't in the business of building tracks until it bought the division of the Roger Penske empire that operated superspeedways. Roger was definitely in the business of building tracks --- Fontana and Kansas were both Penske projects (clones of Roger's track in Michigan) that NASCAR inherited when it made the Michigan/Rockingham purchase, along with the drive to build in Denver and other places (Denver was a Penske target for years until Roger sold the business).

    The problem with building your hypothesis around Jeff Gordon is this: Fans hate Jeff Gordon. Old fans hate Jeff Gordon. New fans hate Jeff Gordon. Lots of fans hate Jeff Gordon because he's boring, quite frankly.

    The megaboom (sellout crowds everywhere, rabid fan interest) under discussion here had been happening for 10 years before Fox and NBC wrote huge checks. The surge that NASCAR rode into the 21st century was built on the Earnhardt/Waltrip years (ever heard of a little thing called Days Of Thunder?), with Gordon stepping into the Waltrip spot after DW started sliding into competitive irrelevance.
     
  5. lono

    lono Active Member

    TESTIFY, IJAG!

    Thanks for the backup.
     
  6. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    I'll believe the sentiment may have been expressed, but not the quote. Who is lame enough to say "I'm so good you can find my name under the letter R for reporter" much less write it, as lono said.

    And if she "wrote" it, what publication did this appear in? The Sentinel? The DMN? The NYT?
     
  7. lono

    lono Active Member

    I stand corrected. She said it, she did not write it.

    But she said it - or a variant of it - over and over again. She felt she was better than anyone else on the beat and pontificated at great length about how her morals, ethics and talent were vastly superior than anyone else's on the beat.
     
  8. jgmacg

    jgmacg Guest

    In reverse order: "Days of Thunder" converted or created no more fans than movies like "Six Pack" or "Redline 9000." And "Days of Thunder" was viewed as laughable by actual NASCAR fans.

    For every Jeff Gordon hater, there's a Jeff Gordon lover. In the '90s he brought hundreds of thousands of new fans into the sport.

    You didn't answer the question I asked. The question was "How many new tracks did SMI (either as a Penske entity or the company as it exists now) or ISC have to build before Gordon arrived in the sport. Perhaps I should have said "choose to build." The answer is "none." The latest generation of new race tracks all arrived on the circuit after Jeff Gordon did.

    For all the things Dale Earnhardt was and did, he didn't cross the sport over to a substantially broader audience. He just didn't. His battles with Waltrip were legendary, certainly, as they had been with Petty, but only to pre-existing NASCAR fans.

    If you want to trace the sport's growth back a little farther, go back to Daytona, 1979. Everyone - and I mean everyone, including Richard Petty - will tell you that the CBS broadcast that day was the moment of the sport's first true national exposure. And yet they didn't have a network contract until the mid-90s. Hmmmm.
     
  9. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    But don't you see, NASCAR has purposely made its name much longer than it needed to be.

    Look at the last four words: "Stock Car Auto Racing"

    Is there Stock Car Motorcycle Racing that I'm unaware of?

    the "auto" is completely unnecessary once you have used the term "car." But it serves the one purpose of making the name so long that no one would ever use it. Thus, they use NASCAR.

    The name should be SCRA --- Stock Car Racing Association.
     
  10. Sxysprtswrtr

    Sxysprtswrtr Active Member

    I don't know the NYT writer nor do I want to bash her, however, her reporting in the story being discussed leaves a lot to be desired.

    Not sure I agree with the notion Jeff Gordon is the sole reason NASCAR "grew beyond the South." Seems to me in the 1990s, that NASCAR was on the upward scale toward more notoriety and he just happened to jump along for the ride.
     
  11. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Bruce was ballsy enough to say it.
    Here's my question: When the Frances have run this thing full circle, when NASCAR has all the appeal of CART and/or IRL races, then what. Will they come crawling back to places that helped it like Nashville and NCMS or try to prop up a hollow shell in Kansas, Cincinnati or others?
     
  12. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    NASCAR was on an upward scale when Gordon arrived, but what he did was present a national, corporate-friendly and attractive face that pushed product, and enabled NASCAR to present itself as more than a bunch of rednecks. When I talk about Gordon on the decline, I don't mean necessarily as a driver, but I mean as a corporate pitchman and face of the sport. At least, you don't see him on every other commercial anymore.

    And, yeah, a lot of NASCAR fans hate Gordon, but those are the ones coming to the track. NASCAR took off because the people watching their TVs loved Gordon.
     
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