NASCAR is always one call away from controversy. This is a lesson that has been glaringly apparent over the last couple of weeks. One penalty gets them into trouble, and another doesn’t. Why that is, is really a matter of perspective.
Take today for instance. Clint Bowyer, fresh off his own controversy with NASCAR, was in the lead in the final 20 laps. Somewhere around lap 17 NASCAR threw a caution for debris on the backstretch. Bowyer was understandably not happy. He complained that the debris had been on the track for most of the the run.
Now exactly why NASCAR threw the caution at that moment is something I can’t answer, but the fact is, it didn’t help Clint Bowyer’s cause. Still it’s hard to argue the caution shouldn’t have been thrown. What if, for instance, that debris had gotten blown out onto the racing surface and Tony Stewart (or some other driver in contention) ran it over. It could have cut his tire down (it wouldn’t have been the first time a driver had his tire cut down by debris) and ended his day – and his shot at the championship.
For years drivers have enjoyed screaming about the ‘phantom caution’ or the ‘competition caution’ when it hurt them, while decrying NASCAR for not throwing a caution when they had their day ended because of debris.
From where I sat, the debris on Sunday looked worthy of a caution. Certainly it looked bad given who the leader was, and it’s probable that the piece of debris was on the track for most of that run. That doesn’t mean though that caution shouldn’t have been thrown.
I write this not to say I think NASCAR is right in every situation. I think there are definitely cautions that have been thrown in the not too distant past that are up for debate, but often NASCAR is left with a situation where they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
As the sanctioning body of this sport NASCAR is often forced to make discretionary decisions. They won’t be perfect every time. And in the case of debris what one perceives as bad enough to throw a caution for is in the eye of the beholder.
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Following Talladega and comments by NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston on his blog, there has been a lot of discussion of the coverage of NASCAR races; more importantly how that coverage is shaping the audience’s perception of what they’re seeing.
All I can say is, it’s about time. Earlier this year I took up the topic of NASCAR and perception. No matter your feelings on the state of the sport, it’s undeniable that the color of coverage shapes what people feel.
Dustin Long interviewed Brian France on the issue of TV coverage. He touched on this issue. He said:
“We fully expect a lot of criticism for any number of reasons, judgment calls that are made, officiating calls that are made and some strategy or policy decisions that are made. We’ve always had that. That’s OK. What I’m saying is in opinions that are under the guise of criticism or being critical that just go on and on and on without much thought that’s different from some policy or rule violation that we didn’t handle correctly, somebody is more than fair to criticize us. It’s just there’s an unprecedented level that occurs when you espouse your opinion about how to do one thing or another.”
If you’re truly being honest with yourself, unless you’re out gathering news, where you get your news or in this case your racing coverage, is going to shape how you feel about it. For instance if you watch the local TV station that is big into covering local crime, chances are you’re going to believe crime is higher in your city. Likewise watching Fox News over MSNBC is likely going to shape how you see issues.
How many times in the last two seasons have you heard about ratings declines, or sagging attendance? The fact is attendance is down in the NFL and ratings are down 6% for MLB on ESPN (we’re no worse off than any other sporting event). If you hear something enough (like this race is boring) though you’ll start to believe it, it’s human nature. The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
I personally found the coverage a little much. I doubt the brass at ESPN was thrilled with it. They’re only driving away the audience for programming ESPN’s already paid for.
The NASCAR writer for the Oakland Press wrote a blog post giving kudos to ESPN for standing up to NASCAR. What are they standing up to NASCAR about? At the end of the day they’re only hurting themselves. ESPN is spending $270 million a year or $2.16 billion (from Sports Business Resource Guide) over the life of their contract for the rights to broadcast NASCAR races. Now you tell me, is it in ESPN’s best interest to say, “hey this product we’re broadcasting is really boring?” I don’t think so.
A couple of weeks ago Dustin Long did a wide-ranging interview about the state of the sport with Larry McReynolds, Kyle Petty and Jimmy Spencer. One of their big criticisms was the negativity that comes out of the sport’s media. While I think this was a pot calling the kettle black moment (they went on to criticize the sport pretty heavily) they made a good point.
Larry McReynolds said:
Darrell has put a great analogy. He goes, if you go to a restaurant and you’ve been going to that restaurant for years and you love that restaurant but you constantly read in the paper, it’s a bad restaurant, it’s a bad restaurant. Eventually, you’re going to say, I’m not going to that restaurant. Even if they rehire a complete new chef, staff, you’re still going to be hesitant about going back to that restaurant.
From time to time I like to watch old races and I’ll be honest with you, it really doesn’t look all that different. There aren’t constant battles for the lead, races do sometimes get spread out, and sometimes one car just dominates. The one big difference is you don’t hear Eli Gold or Ken Squier or Bob Jenkins criticizing the product. If you don’t believe me, track down a race from 10 or 15 years ago.
I don’t mean to suggest that NASCAR fans are more susceptible to this. But I do believe that this negativity runs rampant around here; more so than in other sports. When was the last time you were watching an NFL game and heard Joe Buck say how boring it was?
I think just like in every other sport, announcers need to walk a fine line. Criticize the league or sanctioning body for controversial decisions, fine; don’t drive fans off though by criticizing the product.
People.
Just like any other sport on this planet, the basis of NASCAR is the people involved. The only real difference between NASCAR and other sports being the means in which the competition happens. In one, it’s guys chasing around a while ball trying to hit it the fewest times possible. In another it’s about putting a frozen piece of rubber into a net more times then the other team. And in NASCAR it’s guys duking it out for several hundred miles, behind the wheel of 3,400 lb stock cars, to see who is the fastest.
When you turn on your TV each week and tune in to watch a race, you are given a small glimpse into the lives of some of these people. You watch how they perform on the track, how they perform in the pits, and what they do and say when they have a camera and microphone in their face. And from watching these things, you form an opinion about what kind of person each individual is.
For example, you know that Jimmie Johnson is a great driver, but he’s “kinda vanilla.”
And, you know that Kyle Busch is also a great driver, but he is anything but vanilla.
But if you were being honest with yourself, do you really KNOW these things about these guys?
Unless you are best friends with them, of course you don’t.
This idea of reality vs. perception is not a new topic, but it is an underlying theme in a lot of the current hot button issues in our sport. Whether we are talking about Jeremy Mayfield, Carl Long, Dale Jr., or Kyle Busch.
There was a piece written by Matt McLaughlin that appeared on the website “The Frontstretch” on Tuesday this week about NASCAR’s new Citizen Journalist Corps. In it, McLaughlin offered up some advice that was given to him early in his journalistic career that caught my attention. Here is an excerpt:
[My boss] told me something that was going to stick with me for life. He told me that the more access I got to the garage area, the more I learned about the people who ran the sport and the people who made up the sport, the less I was going to like it. You look behind the curtain and you risk learning that the wizards are only mortal men. I was naive then, I never thought it could happen. It did.
I thought this was interesting because McLaughlin was being warned about his preconceived notions of the sport and the people involved. Like many others, he had this grandiose picture in his mind about the way things were, and he was about to find out that this picture was actually quite different. And apparently, he didn’t like that.
But where he was disappointed to find out that the “wizards” were actually “mortal men,” I personally was amazed.
Having been a long time race fan before I got involved in the sport, I had my own perception of the way people were. But the deeper I got, and the more I learned about the actual people involved, the more I loved NASCAR.
I found out that some drivers I didn’t really like on TV, I actually really liked in person; and vice versa. And discovering that the stars in the garage and on pit road were just regular people doing amazing things made me respect them even more.
Being active on Twitter has allowed us to have some great conversations with folks about a lot of topics. This week, I took the opportunity to find out what some people thought about the ongoing Jeremy Mayfield/positive drug test saga. I wanted to know why it seemed so many people were quickly jumping up to defend Mayfield. I didn’t understand why a positive drug test wasn’t enough evidence to believe Mayfield did wrong. The most common response I got was “he’s not that kind of guy.” Oh really? How do you know?
These folks have a certain view of Mayfield that they have built up over the years watching him race. They believe they know what kind of person he is because they’ve seen him compete and be interviewed on TV, or maybe they’ve met him briefly in public.
What they fail to realize is, the face these drivers put up and the responses given to reporters are often carefully crafted by the PR and marketing people behind the scenes. You are usually seeing the driver how they want you to see him.
So in the cases of both Jeremy Mayfield and Carl Long, the perception is that the big bully (NASCAR) is picking on the defenseless little guy (Mayfield & Long). And many people are eating it up.
The point I’m trying to make here is, don’t let outward appearances fool you into thinking these guys are anything more then regular people. Drivers, crew chiefs, tire changers, owners, whoever. They are all just normal guys who happen to do something special (and some get paid very well). They have problems and make mistakes just like everyone else.
But instead of letting that fact ruin your view of your favorite driver, or NASCAR as a whole, embrace it! Understanding that these people are real humans should make the sport more endearing. Instead of watching mythical beings at work, wouldn’t you much rather watch common men doing uncommon things? I know I would.
I think I should probably just start a problem series. I have been writing about it a lot lately. But I digress…
At the beginning of the season many in the media would have had you believing the world was crashing in on us. They were predicting empty race tracks, fleeing sponsors and failing teams.
Well six months into the year and four months into the season, things aren’t quite as bad as many predicted. Sure a couple teams have folded (the No. 8 car and No. 28 car), the independents are starting to struggle, and sponsors aren’t quite clamoring to spend tens of millions of dollars in the sport, but are things really that bad?
For the last several months everyone has been screaming about television ratings. Yeah they’re down, but if you look at them compared to other sporting events and programming, the sport really isn’t doing too bad. I unfortunately don’t have easy access to the Nielsen ratings, so I am working with what I can find online, but consider this: an average NASCAR race (not the 500 or another big race) does just as well as the NBA Finals did last year. They averaged about 9 million viewers.
That number is also big enough to beat a lot of primetime programming on major networks (not including Greys Anatomy or CSI of course). It also beats the hell out of the top rated cable programming.
Take a look at some older Nielson ratings and compare it to NASCAR this year. They’re down, but they’re no means bad.
The Chicken Littles are also pointing to the down attendance at the tracks. Now if you take the track estimations and subtract 30 to 40,000 (which is probably closer to the truth at some of these places) they are still nothing to scoff at. Any sport would give anything to have 100,000+ fans at their events every week. NASCAR is crying about it.
Sure it’s not the sell-out crowds we got just a few years ago, but still it is very good. The Super Bowl this year had just over 71,000 in attendance. With the exception of some of the smaller tracks, NASCAR easily beats that week in and week out.
Now I know what you’re saying, if there was a football stadium big enough (the new Cowboys stadium perhaps) they would have NASCAR-like attendance for the Super Bowl and that’s probably true (NASCAR couldn’t hope to have the TV viewing audience though), but the fact that NASCAR does that good every week is a very good thing.
So now that we’ve established things really aren’t that bad, I ask you, what is different between this sport and others?
The answer is the negative media attention on the sport.
Baseball attendance has been down and NHL and IndyCar TV ratings have been mediocre on Versus, but you don’t hear their respective press corps bashing the sport. In fact it’s quite the opposite. I have read several stories about how positive everyone is about the Versus ratings despite the fact the ratings have been cut in half for some events and how MLB is looking forward to a jump in attendance once the summer hits.
I feel like this sky is falling mentality has created a very negative perception of the sport by not only the general public but by the fans. I think much of the anxiety fans are feeling and another reason why they aren’t tuning in is the fabricated negativity. When you are reading every other day about how bad things are, or how bad things are going to be you’re going to start to believe it. I know NASCAR is attempting to combat this, but they can only do so much.
Things aren’t quite as great as they have been in previous seasons, there is no denying that, but are things really that bad?