Friday, November 10, 2006

Reality Check For Brian France

Leave it to someone from well outside NASCAR's mainstream to give a much-needed reality check to Brian France. The consistent decline in ratings and attendence gets a hard look here and the reality check thus comes up. The sport won't bounce back because of a new TV deal with a network - ABC/ESPN - that long ago lost ability to cover sports well, nor will it bounce back because of Toyota, though the presence of another manufacturer can never be a negative.

If Brian France has any sense, he needs to ask some hard questions - why did the sport need to go after the pinkhat crowd? Why can't hard-fought races be entertainment enough; why the contrivances of The Chase For The Championship etc.? And where is the hard-fought competition, anyway? Where are the lead changes? Why the marketing overkill? Why not cooperate with other racing series for the benefit of racing in general? Why the Drive For Diversity, when such campaigns elsewhere never work? The inevitable result of the Drive For Diversity is beginning to show.

Brian France is in dire need of such a reality check.

But then right now Brian France has something more immediate to worry about.

2 comments:

TalkGeorge said...

Monkee good morning! I do believe all sport has to evolve, maybe Nascar is just trying to hard to change? So you're saying it probably wasn't a soda pop that BF spilled in his car just before hitting turn 2, I mean the tree?!%

Monkeesfan said...

gvav1 - uh, yes, I highly doubt it was a soda.

As for sports evolving, forcing the issue never worked for anyone; why Brian "Chuck Sullivan" France has to force the issue can only be explained by a sense of hatred of the sanctioning body's southern roots. I guess he saw Deliverence and its redneck cliches too many times.