Examining the six biggest NASCAR myths

What with answering e-mail, making occasional visits to one or two online NASCAR message boards and doing a radio show for four hours each weekday morning on Sirius NASCAR Radio, I spend a pretty sizable chunk of time in contact with race fans.

It has become apparent that there’s a mythology that’s developed around the sport of stock-car racing. There are certain ideas that fans have, for reasons I can’t quite figure out, come to accept as truths.

They’re certainly not truths, of course. At best, they’re debatable opinions.

At worst, they’re just outright bad conclusions drawn from jaded recollections of what has happened over the years. But if you dare to challenge these myths, you’re automatically considered a heretic or, at least, an apologist who’s on the NASCAR payroll.

Well, I dare. Over the next few days in this blog, I am going to count down what I think are the six biggest NASCAR myths. I am going to explain to you why they’re just wrong. A lot of you are going to disagree, I know. But at the very least I hope I will make you think about why you believe what you believe and at least in some way question that.

Let's start with Myth No. 6

6. Racing just isn’t like it was in the “good old days” and that is killing the sport. I could fill up a couple of pages with numbers and statistics showing that, from an actual competition standpoint, that’s just flat wrong.

There have never been more competitive teams capable of running up front and winning that there are right now in this sport.

But data won’t change anybody’s mind about this myth. It’s more about a feeling than facts. It’s the same warm and fuzzy we all get when we think back to how great things were in high school or in college. The music was better. The food was better. Television was better.

You know. The same things that used to make us so mad when our parents told us the same thing about their “good old days.”

Look, history doesn’t have reverse gear. Things change. Things evolve. If NASCAR hadn’t grown, it would have faded away. Those are the only two options.

Thirty years ago, tickets didn’t cost as much. Gas didn’t cost as much. Crowds weren’t anywhere near as big, so traffic was less of a hassle. Hotels rates might not have been as jacked up as they are these days.

But let me remind you that 30 years ago your average salary was lower than it is today. You still had to plan your budget to include races. And when you got the race track chances are you parked in a muddy field or, at best, a gravel lot.

Your seat was a splintering wooden bench and the concession stands offered cold hot dogs, lukewarm coffee and watery soft drinks. If you went to the men’s bathroom, changes are you relieved yourself in a trough or up against a wall. If you went to the women’s bathroom, chances are you couldn't find it.

When the race started, if a wreck happened on a part of the track you couldn’t see you were just out of luck. There were no television screens around the track showing you replays from 12 angles.

When you got home, you couldn’t check the DVR or look on Speed or ESPN to get a frame-by-frame review of the incident. You couldn’t go on the internet and read 20 stories about the race to see what you missed, either.

If you stayed home instead of going to the track there was certainly no guarantee you were going to see the race on television, at least not live and most likely not in its entirety. If you did get to see a race, you didn’t complain if they didn’t have those 12 replay angles because nobody used 12 cameras, total, to show a race. There was no telemetry, there were no in-car cameras. You couldn’t hear in-car audio.

I could go on and on and on and on. I won’t. The point is you can’t back up selectively. If you want the good old days, you have to take the whole package. Personally, I’m good right here where I am.

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Myth No. 5

5. NASCAR’s new fans are killing the sport for its longtime fans.

Let me just say it simply right off the bat. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a NASCAR fan for five minutes or 50 years, you have the same right to like or dislike a driver or a track or a TV announcer or who sings the national anthem or anything like that.

You can pull for open-wheel drivers or against them. You can pull for Toyota because it’s bringing new blood to NASCAR or pull against Toyota because you read about Pearl Harbor in a history book. It’s your prerogative.

That’s the joy of being a fan. If you like Elliott Sadler because of the way he talks, or think Jamie McMurray is a metrosexual dreamboat, or Carl Edwards because he has six-pack abs or Tony Stewart because he doesn’t take any grief off anybody, good for you.

Just don’t let anybody tell you that he has more of a right to be a fan than you do because he’s been around longer.

Look, at some point in every fan’s life he or she went to a track or watched a race on television for the first time. Passion for the sport may have been born when a son went with his dad for the first time, or when a group of single girls decided to go have a party in the infield one weekend.

You may have hated racing until you met and fell in love with someone who didn’t. You may know cars from top to bottom, every bolt and every rivet, or you may not even be able to put gasoline in.

It does not matter. If you want to be a fan, be a fan. But if you decide to be a fan, watch out for anybody who starts a sentence with “I’ve been going to races for...” That’s almost always followed by a lecture on why that person is more entitled to pull for a driver or love going to the track more than you.

Until somebody has a meeting and decides what the cutoff date is, I am going to consider every fan to be equal. Unless somebody tells me that all fans have to carry an ID card affirming that they became a fan before the invitation to love racing got revoked because the lot was full, I am going to consider it everybody’s right to come and go as they please.

As for the question of whether NASCAR is “catering” too much to new fans at the expense of people who’ve been around a while, I will simply ask you to consider how you’d handle it in your business.

Let’s say you sell insurance. Or you run a restaurant. Or you cut hair. Whatever. If you’re trying to get new customers to buy a life insurance policy or patronize your place of business, how do you treat them the first time you meet? Aren’t you extra nice, trying to make them feel welcome? Don’t you take a little extra time, helping them understand their options or the products you have to offer? Might you give them a free desk calendar, suggest your best dessert or offer them a discounted rate on a shampoo, hoping your kindness will be viewed as an invitation to do business again?

Or, would you treat new customers with skepticism and disdain? Let ‘em come back six or seven times to see if they’re really willing to commit to having me worry about making them feel like valued customers.

What have they done for me so far? I’ve got a good business right now, I don’t need more people coming in here and taking my attention and focus away from the people who’ve always come in here. Let them invest a little bit of their money and themselves into doing business with me, and then maybe I will care about them.

Which approach do you think would work better?

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Myth No. 4.

4. Open-wheel racers are killing stock-car racing by taking away rides.

Isn’t it amazing that a lot of the same people who say that qualifying should come down to who can go the fastest and nothing else are the same ones who don’t want to see drivers from other forms of motorsports come to NASCAR?

If you think it should be about who’s the best, shouldn’t that apply across the board? Juan Pablo Montoya has shown that he can be competitive in a stock car. Dario Franchitti, Sam Hornish Jr., Patrick Carpentier, Jacques Villeneuve, Scott Speed and whoever else might come this way each deserve a chance to show that, too.

Some of them are going to succeed. Some are going to fail. That happens with drivers with every other kind of background. There are some drivers with great records in sprint cars who’ve flat failed as NASCAR drivers. That doesn’t mean it was a bad idea to give them a shot.

Most of the folks who subscribe to this myth have their hearts in the right place, sort of, at least.

They believe that owners who’re turning to still-unproven – in terms of stock cars – guys from other types of racing are turning their backs on drivers who’ve paid their dues in more “traditional” types of preparing to race in NASCAR’s top series.

There are really two types of drivers who fall into the group of those who’re being left out of rides taken by drivers from open-wheel circuits.

First, there are veterans like Sterling Marlin, Tony Raines, Ward Burton and so on who are still looking for places to race in 2008. The complaint is that if Dario Franchitti weren’t coming over from the IndyCar Series there might be a place for these guys.

Well, that’s just not true. It’s possible that David Stremme would still be in the cars Franchitti will drive for Chip Ganassi this year if Franchitti had stayed where he was. But it’s far less likely that one of the older veterans would have gotten that ride, or any other big-time ride, especially those who’re 45 years old or more.

Professional sports are dominated by younger participants, and even though a Harry Gant comes along once every three or four racing generations there’s a reason for that. The average age of a NASCAR race winner is just over 33.6 years. You can look that up. I have.

If open-wheel drivers weren’t coming to NASCAR, it’s possible the veterans could add a couple more years to their careers. But is that what’s good for the sport? Isn’t it better for NASCAR to competitors at or near the top of their game instead of people who’re more or less making long-term farewell tours?

It’s more likely, though, those rides could go to younger drivers. Three years ago, THAT was the problem everybody was complaining about. Everybody had a 15-year-old or six in a driver development program and each of them was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. Some of them have made it and some more will, but some of them got washed out, too. If you’re as talented as guys like Joey Logano or Brad Coleman or Bobby Santos appear to be, somebody’s going to give you a shot.

That is, of course, unless the sport falls completely into the trap it seems to be flirting with more and more. That’s this business of giving rides in lower series not to drivers who’re talented, but to drivers whose fathers have more money (and ego) than sense or who’ve managed to find a sponsorship Sugar Daddy to bring with them to the table.

NASCAR rides should be based on a meritocracy. If it ever completely turns into an auction, that’s when people actually should be worried.

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Myth No. 3.

3. The Chase for the Cup is killing the sport. I’ve said it before, but it absolutely amazes me how much some fans love the old Cup championship system now that it’s gone.

Back when I started this job in 1997, fans kept telling me how much they hated that system because it didn’t do enough to reward winning races. How could a driver who wins six races not win the championship when a driver who won just one race did?

Now, though, the old points system is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The Chase hasn’t been the rousing success that chairman Brian France and his minions hoped it would be when it was instituted in 2004. It hasn’t captured the fans’ hearts and, more to the point, it hasn’t done a whole lot to bring more attention to NASCAR in the September-November period each year when it’s competing against a lot of other sports for attention.

But there is not one scintilla of evidence that the sport would not be deeper in a slump from a television ratings or any other perspective if the Chase did not exist. The Chase is not the cause of that “lull,” there are dozens of things that have contributed to that.

But if there had been absolutely no championship drama to the final races of each of the past four NASCAR seasons, who knows how much deeper the dip the sport has suffered might be?

One complaint I keep hearing about the Chase, however, is complete hogwash. That’s this idea that because of the Chase the television networks and media focus too much on the people in the Chase at the expense of teams that don’t make it.

The simple way to defeat that notion is to use basic math. Under the Chase format as it now exists, 12 teams have a legitimate chance to win the championship with 10 races left. Never, ever, under the old system was that possible.

Under the old system, quite often it was down to three or four teams by that point and gradually got down to just two or even one with a few races to go.

As the championship became the sport’s be-all and end-all, those were the teams that got the focus as the season wound down. Now, that focus is diffused to at least 12 teams for the first few Chase races, and as the list of contenders dwindles it’s still broader than it otherwise would have been.

How much more attention did Clint Bowyer get by winning the first Chase race and staying toward the top of the standings in 2007 than he would have earned under the old championship season?

And, before you start, Jeff Gordon didn’t get jobbed out of the 2007 championship. Gordon DID NOT score the most points last season, either. Jimmie Johnson did, under the rules as they exist, and that’s why he got the big check and trophy.

I don’t care what would have happened under the old system, it’s not relevant. It’s like asking what would have happened in the Civil War if the South had access to nuclear weapons.

The New England Patriots won 16 regular-season games this year. But if they don’t win their playoff games, they’re not going to win the championship. That’s the Chase folks. Playoffs happen in every major sport except for college football and tennis.

Are you telling me the BCS mess is a better system? Please! And how’s tennis faring in the sports marketplace these days?

Don’t tell me that NASCAR can’t be compared to stick-and-ball sports. It is compared to those sports every minute of every day in terms of remaining a viable business.

You can’t “fix” what’s wrong with racing by ignoring the business aspects of keeping it alive.

NASCAR has to survive and, it hopes, flourish in the very real world that pits it against the NFL, NBA, baseball and other sports in competition for attention, coverage, television rights fees, advertising dollars and fans. The Chase is a part of NASCAR’s effort to do just that.

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Myth No. 2.

2. The lack of personality among NASCAR drivers is killing the sport. I can’t tell you how many e-mails I get from fans complaining about television networks “wasting time” showing features about drivers and their wives, or their pets, or their hobbies, or their grandparents or anything else that’s not about what happens to them on the race track.

But then, in the same breath, you get this ridiculous idea that drivers in the sport are too bland or how they’re too robotic and scared to death to say anything controversial.

Let’s start with the controversy part. Look, you’re not being paranoid if everybody really is out to get you. Fans yammer about how they want drivers to show a little bit of emotion, but what happens to any driver who dares do that? Fans – and the media, in all honesty – jump on him like white on rice.

Carl Edwards blew his top for 30 seconds at teammate Matt Kenseth after the race at Martinsville last year and all of a sudden Edwards went from the nicest guy in the world to somebody who ought to be next in line for Dr. Phil after he gets through fixing up Brittney Spears.

Ask Tony Stewart how much good it has done him to show his emotions. Ask Kurt Busch. Ask Kyle Busch.

I have people telling me all of the time that NASCAR needs a “villain,” a bad guy that some fans would pull for and others would pull as passionately against. That’s fine, unless you’re that guy.

You live your life getting booed when you walk into restaurants and you’re supposed to smile and wave and act like you love it. You have people who actually stand up and cheer when you wreck, even before they know whether you’re hurt or not.

It’s crazy to ask a guy to endure all of that just for a fan’s amusement. It’s crazy to ask a guy to constantly be in a feud with NASCAR, his sponsor, his car owner and the media just to keep some kind of controversy going. Life’s too short for that.

I know just about everybody in the Cup Series and I promise you there are very few people in this sport who don’t have interesting stories to tell or thought-provoking opinions they’re willing to share. Most of them do work with their own foundations or other types of charities that distinguish them as outstanding human beings.

But that’s not enough. What some fans seem to want is for there to be a fist-fight after every race. Come on, be honest. It’s not about showing “personality,” it’s about showing your tail on national television.

Why do Brittney and Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton virtually have their own cable networks following their missteps? Americans can’t stop watching train wrecks, that’s why.

Some fans want to see somebody in NASCAR run off the tracks every week, and that’s just stupid. What’s wrong with somebody acting like an adult? What’s wrong with someone having a little sportsmanship?

Would it kill NASCAR for someone to actually say: “You know what? There may or may not be other guys in this sport who’re bending the rules, but my team and I have decided that we have too much integrity for that. We’d rather lose fair than win cheating.”

Actually, that’s precisely the kind of personality I think fans would want to get behind.

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Myth No. 1

1. The top-35 rule is killing the sport’s smaller teams. The rule that guarantees the top-35 teams in car owner standings a spot in each week's starting field isn’t killing anything but time on talk shows.

Fans squawk constantly about how they want qualifying to be cut and dried. The fastest 43 cars in each week’s qualifying race on Sunday. That’s it, no provisionals and no nothing. Put it back like it used to be.

Well, it never used to be that the sport’s top teams lacked protection from missing races. Over the sport’s history, that safety net has been called several things. Sponsor exemptions, promoter’s options and provisionals have been used since the beginning of auto racing competition to make sure that the people the fans come to see are there when it’s time to race.

The biggest flaw in this myth is that putting the onus on qualifying would help teams that have less funding and fewer resources. That’s absurd.

The same teams beating their brains out on Sunday would just beat them on Friday. The reason teams aren’t in the top 35 is that their cars don’t run fast enough, and if you make it where the cars that do regularly run faster absolutely have to do that in qualifying, then those better cars are going to win that battle, too.

The last thing NASCAR needs to do to help smaller teams is make them spend more money on qualifying. They need to be spending the money they have on racing better so they can get into the top 35 and be on the other side of the equation.

If you turn qualifying into a money contest the smaller teams are just going to lose that battle, too.

The way it is now, at least those teams are competing to make races with other “go-or-go-home” cars who’re in the same boat, financially and competitively, that they’re in. If, as expected, NASCAR puts all of those cars together in the qualifying order this year it will be more fair than it has been.

If you did away with the top-35 rule, every once in a while a top-tier team would go home because a tire blew or a driver overdid it in a corner and spun out. But what purpose does that serve? Teams lower in the standings don’t get any sort of real, long-term help while the teams that are putting fans in the stands take an occasional kick in gut. How does that help the sport or its fans?

Yes, the teams who don’t make the show have sponsors and the drivers missing the show have fans, too. But if you’re going to have guaranteed spots, you have to draw lines somehow, some way.

I am not in love with 35 as the number of exemptions. I think 25 would be a great number, but I could live with 30, too.

Anyway, if you really want to help the teams with less funding and resources, limit the number of guaranteed spots any one car owner could have to three cars. A Jack Roush or a Rick Hendrick could field 10 cars if he wanted to, but only the three that are highest in owner standings would be guaranteed spots.

But the idea of not having any provisional spots to make sure that the sport’s marquee names race every week is just dumb.

I know that some of you are screaming John Force’s name at me right now. Yes, I know the legendary National Hot Rod Association funny car champion failed to qualify for a race at Las Vegas and went home.

For one thing, drag racers make multiple qualifying runs down the strip. You get more than one chance to be in the top 16 and make the eliminations. If you have a mechanical issue or if a tire goes south, you get a chance to recover from that. The way NASCAR qualifying is set up right now, it’s one shot and you’re done. When Force missed the show at Vegas his team had several chances to get the job done.

But they didn’t and Force didn’t race.

I’ve had people tell me that didn’t hurt the NHRA, and I disagree. I feel confident there were people who came to Vegas for eliminations on Sunday who went home disappointed they didn’t get to see Force race, and I just don’t see where it’s good business practice to disappoint your customers.