Nascar’s Transition from a Sport to an “Exhibition Spectacle"

Nascar’s Transition from a
Sport to an “Exhibition Spectacle”.

I’m going to switch gears a little on IoF today. As I offer opinion, from the "Southern Viewpoint", I think I am staying within the bounds of IoF if I comment on the demise of NASCAR.

Demise? Are you crazy, Longstreet? Well, actually being crazy for me is beside the point. As my family can tell you... that is a fact they accepted a very long time ago. Back to Nascar’s demise.

Nascar’s TV base is dropping off sharply. Very sharply. If the trend continues you are going to see less and less of Nascar on your TV. Of course, Nascar could set up it’s own cable channel and broadcast the races there. But… that would cost them a huge bundle of money. As it is now, they make obscene amounts of money from the networks and cable channels who pay them for the rights to broadcast their events.

There was a time, in my long and less than colorful career, in which I negotiated those contracts each year for my own little bit of the broadcast kingdom.

What, then, has happened?

Nascar has kissed off its fan base. Southern racing fans. As a result, they are walking away from Nascar in droves. Please forgive me for tooting my own horn here, but I predicted this would happen over two years ago.

As a former card carrying member of Nascar and as a former racetrack announcer who rubbed shoulders with the early giants of stock car racing, I must tell you it is no surprise and… yet, it is saddening to see the sport killed off by the off spring of the man who built it’s popularity into a gigantic sport enjoyed by millions all over the USA.

Stock Car Racing, for all practical purposes, began right here in the North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. It grew out of mountain bootleggers outrunning the Federal Tax Man with their loads of White Lightening. The men built souped-up cars that would run rings around the fed’s cars, plus the driver’s ability far exceeded that of the revenuers. It wasn’t long until bootlegger was competing against bootlegger, on Sunday afternoons, out of sheer boredom. Locals began to gather to watch the shine runners race against each other… rather than the taxman. Some local entrepanuer quickly realized he could charge that crowd of people to watch those races so he built a fence around the red clay track and charged a couple of bucks to get inside the fence and stand up just to watch the demonstrations of speed and driving ability. The rest, as they say, is history.

It truly is a Southern Thang!

But stock car racing as the Southerner knew it, has been hijacked. It’s gone. Now it is more akin to a professional wrestling match than to a trial of speed and skill.

Southerners feel slighted. We feel our sport has been taken away and we are angry! We are also embarrassed by the idiotic promotions of racing events

Here in North Carolina, the Rockingham Speedway (The Rock!) has been closed. Where once there were racing spectaculars, at least twice a year, the track sits empty and quiet.

Across the border, in South Carolina, the grand daddy of all stock car racing tracks, the Darlington Motor Speedway sits idle much of the year. Even the Southern 500 is no longer run there.

Is there any wonder why the Southern Racing fan is turning away from Nascar racing?

If Nascar racing survives another decade it will bear so little resemblance to the Southern sport of stock car racing as to be unrecognizable by the Southern racing fans. It is very nearly there now.

What the racing world needs is a competitor to Nascar. A racing association based in the South. Racing fans need a racing association to take stock car racing back to its roots.

Back in the days when a couple of brothers could visit a local car dealer in Daytona, Florida, purchase a new car, drive it to the track…and win the race with it, are, of course, gone. (That actually happened, by the way!) But, the desire to see racing in its purest form is still alive and well in the South. Our Northern brethren, and our western brethren, can be excused for not knowing racing when they see it… for what they have seen, via NASCAR, is NOT, I repeat, NOT Southern style stock car racing.

The damage done to Southern Stock Car racing need not be fatal. It needs a revival. But it will not get it as long as NASCAR rules stock car racing in the US.

A new racing association is called for. The sooner, the better, while a few of us old mossbacks, who still remember what the real thing looks like, are still above the grass!

Longstreet