NASCAR Knows What It's Doing?

David Smith argues that NASCAR knows what it is doing with the varied changes of the last few years. He argues that the changes of the last few years "have been an amazing success, especially the new 'Chase For The Cup.'" His argument, however, is not persuasive.

Smith askes, "Tell me who was in tenth place in points at the 2003 Capital City 400." Of course one has to look up this stat, "but I'm sure you can tell me who was there in 2006, 2005, and 2004, as well as eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth." Uh, no, like with the 2003 Richmond question it would have to be looked up, and how relevent is it in any event? The driver who was tenth after the Capital City 400 was locked into the top ten in points those previous three seasons; what happened after that? The competitiveness of the racing wasn't helped at all by the playoff format.

Smith also cites new TV deals, without noting that NASCAR has done a 180 here. When it got the FOX/NBC deal of 2001-6, a stated goal was to centralize TV coverage, the argument going that fans had to jump around too much to find TV coverage each week. Now, though, we're going back to jumping around, as BGN will be on ESPN entirely, the Trucks are still on SPEED TV, while Winston Cup starts at FOX, jumps to TNT for late-spring and summer, then jumps to ABC/ESPN from late July onward. So which is it, guys - is TV coverage split up too much or is it centralized too much?

"ESPN has access to markets and mediums that NASCAR could only dream about." It does? You mean FOX, NBC, and/or CBS don't have similar access? Smith lays out that a problem was "lack of good television coverage during the second half of the season," and states that the solution was "Bring back ESPN." He ignores the lowball quality of ESPN programming, far worse than anything NBC or FOX have - ESPN has made Monday Night Football in particular a travesty and its racing coverage was always inferior to CBS/World Sports coverage when it was involved in the sport.

There is also the addition of Toyota to Winston Cup, and like everyone else David Smith ignores how Toyota has helped bankrupt the Truck Series like it has every other racing series it has entered. Smith mixes Toyota's entry with the entry of Juan Montoya, saying "it will boost NASCAR's drive to diversify the sport." Smith of course doesn't explain just why there is any need to diversify the sport or anything else for that matter. Diversity campaigns never succeed, especially in a competitive market that makes arranging the winners beforehand fail.

Smith wants us to remember the mid-1990s and claims NASCAR was not in the top five in pro sports in this country. He ignores that NASCAR ratings back then were more than competitive with everyone save the NFL. NASCAR has not improved in that regard since then. "Last season's dip in ratings and atendence was going to happen at some point." A leveling of ratings and attendence, yes, but not a drop as has been seen the last four seasons; a drop such as this indicates a fundamental weakness catching up to the sport.

Smith obviously hopes the Spec Car/Car of Tomorrow will live up to its promise of safer drivers and racier cars, ignorant of the failure of the COT in testing and the fundamental unsoundness of the design to go with overselling the danger element of the cars before. NASCAR for its part has continued pushing the COT, and Penske Racing's Daytona test last week was part of that push, even though once again teams boycotted bringing COTs to the Daytona test - all were invited to do so - and neither driver tried to draft with the car; the speed of 191 was a red flag as "that's not the way we can race around here," Ryan Newman noted.

"Many of you said NASCAR was ruining the sport 20 years ago when they switched over to different cars..." Actually no one thought that. "...or when they changed from bias-ply tires to radials, or when they added restrictor plates..." It's been the plate races that saw the highest ratings increases over the years. "Still, even after all that, you watch. Why? Because NASCAR knows what its doing." No, David, people watch to see racing, not because NASCAR knows what its doing - if anything, NASCAR has shown it doesn't know what it is doing. People watch more in spite of NASCAR than because of it.