 If you were a store owner, wouldn’t you do your best to carry all of the products which were most heavily demanded by your customers? Of course you would. Now, let’s say that, for no reason but your own laziness, you simply don’t carry one of the top five demanded goods of your customers. Wouldn't you think that was a bit irresponsible, a bit unsympathetic towards your clientele? Again, of course you would. Unfortunately, that scenario is exactly what's happening with the semi-sports media, which inexcusably refuses to care about NASCAR.
That’s right, folks – it’s time for your friendly Southern media watcher to tell you how we all need to be edu-ma-cated on the sport that brings you thousands of left turns every Sunday.
Go ahead – claim that it’s only for hillbillies in former slave states. I’ll point out that just over half of the points-bearing Nextel Cup Schedule will take place outside of the South, and NASCAR doesn’t have any trouble putting fannies in the seats. This past weekend in Fontana, CA at the Auto Club 500, conservative estimates pegged the Sunday crowd around 65,000 fans – a number that doesn’t account for folks who came to other race events that weekend (car expos, fan events, races for the Craftsman Truck Series and Busch Series), which officials estimate at almost a quarter million people. Even if that’s double the actual number (calm down – all major sports leagues inflate their attendance figures), NASCAR got itself a not-small crowd. And that’s in California, the anti-South.
Go ahead – say that there isn’t big money in the sport. I’ll smile and note that the association just signed a broadcast deal with five networks worth around $4.5 billion over eight years. That figure isn’t too out of whack, when you see that the Daytona 500 was good for an 11.3 household rating (or roughly 37 million viewers) and 23 share for NBC: higher than any of the Olympic events. Plus, those infamous sponsors pay near $20 million a year for the right to have their name on your favorite driver’s hood. I’ll note that top drivers in Cup racing are rumored to command the same seven (or eight) figure salaries as other big name athletes, though only team owners know for sure since the association keeps a tight lid on salary figures. Oh, and have I mentioned NASCAR’s schwag empire?
Go ahead and say whatever you want. NASCAR is big time sports, and deserving of big time coverage. And to a degree, the mainstream media is starting to come around, in no small part due to a broadcast package which now includes both Fox and Bristol. Fox’s coverage has been stellar on TV and the web for years, but ESPN is finally starting to catch up. To their credit, ESPN has already hired former Cup champion Rusty Wallace for race color commentary (even though their broadcast rights don’t begin for another year). They’ve even started to let Mike Mossaro, their longtime covered-wheel expert, appear in the SportsCenter studio for pre- and post-race analysis. Geez, who does he think he is, Barry Melrose?
But what about the semi-sports media? I began to wonder after the Nextel Cup season began. The day after the Daytona 500, race winner Jimmie Johnson appeared on Mike and Mike in the Morning, only to be peppered with the most general of questions from the admittedly clueless hosts. (Hey, acceptance is the first step.) Later that day on PTI, we got to hear, yet again, how Mr. Tony and Willybuns believe a restrictor plate has something to do with an early bird special.
An exhaustive search for racing coverage from the past six months on my favorite semi-sports sites didn’t reveal much more. Deadspin at least handed over the links to come blogs, but beyond that, the NASCAR mentions were limited to “About Last Night…” and the occasional plug for Jeff MacGregor’s excellent book on the sport, Sunday Money. And that was while the racing was going on – the Silly Season coverage was non-existent. The Mighty MJD, normally rock solid, was at least honest enough to admit that he flat out doesn’t care for the sport, or its intrusion on his enjoyment of other sports. I suppose that explains posts he made early last year, sneering at the sport’s sponsors and perceived race problem, both at home and abroad. The problems are real, don’t get me wrong, but there are ways to approach them besides dismissing the entire sport. Blissfully, there was some humor to be found. Though SportsPickle hasn't taken on NASCAR recently, Onion Sports found time to have four racing-related blurbs in its latest addition alone. The jokes were good - a groan-worthy commemoration of Dale Earnhardt's death and a poke at Tony Stewart's ribs - but a little on the cliche side. I would say that I expect better from them ... but now that I know ESPN is doing some of their writing, that just wouldn't be true. But that's pretty much the extent of what I found. The other top sites for the semi-sports inclined, like The Sports Pulse, The Wiz of Odds, Dave's Sports Views, Joe Sports Fan, YAY!Sports? All silent. Even at SPiN, I was only able to find a Playboy-esque biofile of Dale Jr. Had it been accompanied by a Playboy-esque centerfold of same, I might have thrown up, but you get my point - when that pathetic interview represents six months of semi-sports coverage of a major sport, that's...well, pathetic.
But surely, the back (web) pages for the big name media that cover the races would do better, right? Not so fast, since their big names are no racing fans. Simmons? No columns, no mailbag questions, and only a pair of mentions. Daily Quickie? Shanoff worked in a couple of mentions (including NASCAR's new romance novels), but those were limited to major news announcements such as the broadcast deal and NASCAR’s pledge to go green, and usually included a snide remark about the NASCAR fan base. The rest of Page 2 didn’t fare much better – I couldn’t find a single column devoted to the sport. Heck, even after Roush driver Carl Edwards made the cover of The Mag with his firesuit down, neither he nor any other driver from the circuit could make the ballot in the annual Hottest Male Athlete vote … an honor even IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon can claim. Even Fox, the online leader in mass media NASCAR information, doesn't offer much in the way of semi-sports coverage - a Page 2-wannabe bracket for Hottest Nextel Cup driver and a series of diary entries from rookie Roush drivers are all that FOXSports can muster for those of us who like our sports and entertainment to mix. Is it possible that, despite the massive fan base and dollars at stake, the semi-sports media is still in the dark on racin’? It certainly appears so, but why? First, as MJD kindly demonstrates, a lot of writers in the semi-sports media look at NASCAR with that same hicks-only stereotype I tried to debunk earlier. There are reasons this myth persists - almost all the drivers and teams are based around Charlotte, most drivers are from the South originally (and talk and act like it), and the politics of the average NASCAR fan tend to run far to the right to those of the average sports blogger. But there are boorish athletes and fans in all sports, and the semi-sports media still covers them with glee - ignoring NASCAR for this reason alone is elitism at its worst. Second, it's possible that there isn't much demand. Even more so than other sports, NASCAR fans take care of their own. The sport's blogging world is strong and diverse: professionals from major North Carolina papers like The (Greensboro) News & Record bring insider knowledge to the silly side of the sport; part-time scribes like the Diecast Dude provide fun trivia and the fan viewpoint; and weirdos like The Gospel According to Clance' predict races using Astrological tables. It could be that NASCAR fans get their fill of sports-related entertainment from within the community. The biggest reason, though, is likely the high cost of entry. NASCAR, like any sport, requires a certain threshold knowledge to cover it well: the art of bump drafting, the science of pit stop calculation, and the ins and outs of "team" racing aren't intuitively obvious. Unlike other sports, however, NASCAR wasn't watched constantly by most sports fans as they grew up. When you are reared on the happenings on the court, ice, gridiron, and diamond, you pick up the tricks of the trade more easily, like a foreign language. With NASCAR? Most people in our generation are starting from scratch. I suspect that most members of the semi-sports media are simply unwilling to invest the time and energy necessary to be able to cover, analyze, and make fun of the sport at anything more than a surface level. So why do I care so much about the snub from the semi-sports media? Despite what you might think (after all, I am from North Carolina), it’s not out of some loyalty to the sport. I’m not even a particularly big NASCAR fan. I enjoy listening to races on the radio when I’m driving, but I’d rather read race summaries the next day than watch the races live on TV. I have a favorite driver (Tony Stewart, and not just because he won the Chase last year), but I certainly don’t own any of his Team Home Depot paraphernalia. So this isn’t just fan griping.
It’s professional griping. Go back to the store example from above, and now pretend you are one of the customers of that store. Forget that you can go to a speciality shop for the good in question; you want to get it while shopping for everything else. Wouldn't you be disappointed if you couldn't find a major, popularly demanded good just because the store was too lazy to stock it? Of course you would. It's not just that it inconveniences you; it's a sign that the store doesn't care about doing its job to the top of its ability.
Similarly, the semi-sports media ... from the top dogs at Deadspin and Page 2 on down ... is letting all of us down with the lackluster coverage they give to NASCAR. So, to them, my dear scribes of all things unsacred in sports: tell us about the racers off the track. Talk to us about business deals, magazine spreads, and public appearances. And for the love of God, learn about the sport itself. It's simply not too much to ask that you cover NASCAR like what it is: a major sport, just as capable of being mocked and exploited as the others.
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