Do you notice in every sport how quickly the complaining starts when said sport’s hall of fame nominees and then inductees are announced? Unfortunately the status quo has been maintained in NASCAR. And as such, last week when the five new nominees were named for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, the usual brain trust set forth in complaining about why another driver, owner, crew chief etc. should have been nominated instead.
However minor, some amount of controversy has surrounded the last two classes to our Hall of Fame. As I’m sure many of you recall, in the first year it was that David Pearson got passed over for the likes of Dale Earnhardt, Bill France Jr. and Sr., Richard Petty and Junior Johnson. This year, Pearson got in, but it was Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip who didn’t (and some argued should have).
So inevitably when the Hall announced the nominees for the 2012 class, there was going to be someone, somewhere, unhappy with who was selected, or as was the case, not selected. And this year it was the question of why Wendell Scott wasn’t nominated over H. Clay Earles, Bobby Isaac, Cotton Owens, Les Richter and Leonard Wood (all, incidentally, men who contributed a great deal to the sport).
The inherent problem with a hall of fame selection process is that deserving people are going to get left out year in and year out. At this very early stage of this particular hall of fame, deciding who contributed most is nothing short of difficult. Take the Junior Johnson, David Pearson debate. While Pearson is arguably the best driver ever to wheel a racecar in NASCAR, Johnson’s folk hero status (not to mention winning ways) did an immense amount of good in bringing the sport into the mainstream. It was the Silver Fox vs. The Last American Hero. How do you decide?
Currently waiting to be selected are 25 guys who did a lot for this sport – that’s not to say though that there are 25 or 50 or 100 others who aren’t on the list who didn’t do just as much. It’s just going to take time to assure all those who should be inducted, are inducted.
I ask you, be patient, be respectful of those in the nomination process and enjoy these moments to relive the history of our sport through some of our sport’s biggest names. Your guy’s time will come.
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Filed under: Daytona Int'l Speedway, NASCAR
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You know that old adage, “you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time”? Well, welcome to the selection process for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
This year’s inductees were announced on Wednesday – and as with last year there was disappointment and disagreement. It’s hard to argue David Pearson, Bud Moore, Ned Jarrett, Lee Petty, and Bobby Allison don’t deserve inclusion into the hall.
Still, some were questioning today why Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarborough weren’t included this year. Waltrip has 84 wins and three championships to his credit and Yarborough has 83 wins and three championships. Waltrip was quite upset. Their time is coming – just not this year.
The fact is, these two aren’t the only ones who could have been included in the second class. What about Raymond Parks? If he had lived another four months would he have been included in this year’s class? Or how about Dale Inman?
The question is at this point, what gets valued over everything else? Should on-track tangibles and intangibles be more important than off-track tangibles and intangibles? Certainly Bruton Smith (who by the way has been inexplicably left off the list of Hall candidates for the last two years) and T. Wayne Robertson did/have done just as much, if not more for the sport as Bud Moore and Lee Petty.
And then comes the prestige factor. Do you allow Cup guys in before considering prolific winners in lower series like Jack Ingram, or Richie Evans? After all this isn’t the Cup Series Hall of Fame (as I’ve seen some suggest), it’s the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
I think we all know this isn’t an easy process, and the questions I’ve posed don’t really have yes or no answers. Right now, we as observers of the sport struggle with who to induct because there are so many great candidates – if Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip had been inducted this year over say, Bobby Allison and Ned Jarrett, people still would have been screaming about it. ‘Why didn’t they induct Ned Jarrett and Bobby Allison this year?’ It’s just the nature of the beast.
I think this process has been run about as well as it possibly could be. Still, it’s not, and never can be a perfect process with a perfect outcome. I find it very disappointing that some have taken to questioning the integrity of the voters. It’s disrespectful not just to them, but to those who have been selected for induction.
As I said at the start, in this process “you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time.” Welcome to NASCAR.
Filed under: NASCAR Hall of Fame, NASCAR