Posts Tagged ‘NASCAR’

This post is part of a continuing series — “The Cost of Sports” — examining the impact of current economic changes on the world of major sports.    To see the other posts in this series, click here.

As I discussed in Part 1 of this series on the cost of sports, at Tennessee, the price can be high when it comes to paying your way into Neyland Stadium — a truth of which Nashville’s Thomas Luck is all too aware.  I discussed the issue purely in terms of the experience at Tennessee mainly because it is what I am familiar with.  Tennessee was but a lens — the reality is largely the same at all schools with a major athletics presence.

The world of professional sports, however, makes the college ranks look like small potatoes in the way it is wed to the almighty dollar.  Given the current uncertain economic times, however, I question whether professional sports in particular can continue in the way it has for so long.

I suppose that sports fans should not be surprised at the notion that professional teams would necessarily focus on money, after all that is what professional athletics are all about: getting paid to play.  I suppose Rod Tidwell (from the movie “Jerry Maguire”) summed it up best with the oft quoted line “Show me the money!“  What I think is a bit surprising is how willingly and uncomplainingly professional sports fans have accepted the “money first” approach of all the teams in all the major leagues.  The increases in costs passed along to professional sports fans over the last generation is really quite staggering.

Video: Show me the Money!!

But don’t take my word for it…

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This past Sunday I once again was present for the running of the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina. This represents the 19th consecutive time that I have attended the race with my Father and some close friends.

If you’ve never been to a NASCAR race, you really should go sometime — it simply isn’t the same on television as it is in person. I won’t say that it is necessarily better (some people hate sitting in the stands to watch a race, just because of the crowds) but it is definitely different. I have attended races at a number of tracks, and I can honestly say that — in my opinion — the facilities at Lowe’s Motor Speedway are about as nice as you will find. Furthermore, the entire atmosphere at LMS is geared toward being fan-friendly, and improving the experience of the common fan.

All of that aside, I have followed racing — with wildly varying degrees of intensity — for quite a while now. Things, however, have changed so much since I first became a race fan, that it almost seems like a different sport. Names, cars, colors — pretty much from top to bottom NASCAR is nothing like it was back in the late 1980’s when I first started watching the sport. In some ways it is surprising that a sport which proudly proclaims its dedication to “traditional” values — and which often targets a politically conservative fan base — would so embrace radical and unending change.

There is no question that, since the advent of the current television broadcast model used by NASCAR — a 50% split of races between Fox Sports and ESPN / Speed (previously with NBC Sports) — racing has been propelled from the second tier of sports to one of the mainstays. Whether that is tied to the increased coverage, or vice versa is open to debate. Either way, the drivers and teams are no longer just “average joes” who like to speed on Sundays, but maintain an otherwise fairly normal existence during the week. The drivers of today are superstars and command a following which rivals that attributed to many professional sports teams.

So too, gone are the sleepy little racetracks sitting idly by in a cow pasture in the middle of nowhere. The tracks of today are gigantic motorsports super-plexes which seat ridiculous numbers of people and define the surrounding landscape in a way which surpasses even the great “temples” of college and professional sports. Lowe’s Motor Speedway, for instance, seats a whopping 167,000 people (almost twice the size of Neyland Stadium) in an arc surrounding its 1.5 mile quad-oval track. The entire track is lit by 1,200 light fixtures, allowing night racing. The main garage is over 20,000 square feet. In addition to the main track, the facility includes a dirt track, a 2.5 mile road course, and will soon include an drag strip intended to host NHRA events. On top of all of this, it includes two towers of condominiums above the first turn, which serve as year-round residences as well as race day event locations, and a bevy of luxury suites.

Lowe’s Motor Speedway and First-Turn Condo Towers Illuminated by 1,200 Light Fixtures

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Once again the sports world is abuzz about the start of spring training, and yet another Major League Baseball season. Baseball has a long list of issues on its plate as the season gets rolling along. All of the off-season chatter has centered on the problems arising from the Mitchell Report, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Bud Selig, Brian McNamee, Bob Uecker, Pedro Cerrano, Ebby “Nuke” LaLoosh, Rick Vaughn, and Crash Davis. Those last five names actually have nothing to do with the controversy swirling in baseball, but I threw them in just for the hell of it — after all, the more the merrier.

Anyway, I am sure that the powers that be in baseball simply cannot wait to get the 2008 season going so they can put all of this ugliness behind them — “move on” as it were. There are only 2 problems with this line of thinking:

1. The start of the 2008 season is not going to put the steroid issues that have been plastered all over the media for the last 6 months “behind” baseball, not even a little, and
2. Even if it did cause millions of otherwise reasonably informed Americans to suddenly forget about a story that has been covered with more nauseating detail and intensity than the war in Iraq, that forgetfulness would only be the result of the fact that increasingly fewer people in this country give two shits about Major League Baseball anymore anyway.

I think baseball has a very tough road ahead of it…

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