IT SHOULD BE ABOUT RACING….NOT GIMMICKS

With the NASCAR Winston Cup, OH! wait a minute, let me start again, With the NASCAR SPRINT CUP season kicking off in Daytona I must say that once again this year I am NOT excited.  For the past several years NASCAR has been more about Gimmicks rather than Racing. This trend seemed to have kicked into high gear when Winston was legislated out of racing and Sprint came in as the title sponsor. But really the trend started the last few years of the Winston Sponsorship when NASCAR forgot about the fans. 

From 1963 thru 2001 I attended every race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Tickets for the 1963 World 600 and National 500 were $12.50 for top row seats in the Chrysler Grandstand. When I stopped attending races at Charlotte in after the 2001 season my World 600 and National 500 Tickets was $155.00 plus an additional $85 for the Saturday Busch Series Races.  Couple that with a 3-night minimum stay in a mid-range motel at $185 per night, I was spending well over $1000 before I even got to the race track. What it boiled down to was I could just as easily stay home and watch on TV and not have to spend the money, fight the traffic (who could forget Kentucky a couple of years ago) and sleep in my own bed. In short I was priced out and could no longer afford to attend NASCAR Races.

But NASCAR wasn’t done. They started tinkering with the rules, trying to make everything equal.  They took everything away from the crews and the drive and ended up with follow the leader boring races.  They started scripting driver interviews, award speeches and worse yet the racing itself.  They will deny it but go back and look at the phantom cautions to bunch the field up. NASCAR has turned into a scripted show (not a competition) that resembles Big Time Rasslin, in fact I think Rasslin is probably more entertaining. You no longer have the Dale Earnhardts, David Pearsons, Bobby Allison, Junior Johnson, and drivers who cared about one thing and that was racing.  Today’s Drivers are more concerned about sponsors and have the right soft drink in their hand anytime they are on camera. To today’s driver, the racing comes second.

I used to take off work on Thursday’s to listen, yes I said listen to the Twin 125 qualifying races on Thursday. They weren’t on TV back then. An on Sunday there was always a party at my house for the Daytona 500.  Today, with all of the “Fan Voting” and the choreographed stuff that is going on it is just simply hard to watch.

As the 2013 season start I will long for the day of old when it was about Racing, but when all is said and done I will be watching COLLEGE BASKETBALL.