NC HillBilly
Back home where I belong
Apologies for the "bitch about NASCAR" novel I'm about the write but I've held off on it for decades now and wanted to get all this down somewhere and maybe some input to see if I'm way off base. For what it's worth I was born in 1986 and was a diehard fan of NASCAR from before I could walk until about the time I entered college in 2005/2006. So I came up in what people consider the "golden age" these days although I remember plenty of people back in the 90s complaining that things weren't as good as the 70s-80s. My family have been attending races since the late 40s/early 50s and I know a lot of people that (used to) make a decent living working for the organization. With that out of the way; my rant.
I hate everything about modern NASCAR. Lately, I've been re-watching old races from the 80s-early 2000s along with the odd modern race here and there. I've noticed that pretty much everyone I know IRL that watches modern NASCAR did not watch it 20-30 years ago and were the same people that back then that turned their noses up at "rednecks going in circles for 3 hours". I think I have a pretty good handle on why things are worse now than they used to be. I'm going to try to break this out into sections to make it readable.
1) The car
Let's start with the elephant in the room and why things are so bad. I hate the modern car. I've hated the car since the COT was introduced. But compared to the modern car the COT is much better. I do not mind the fact that it's a spec car. But surely we can build a better spec car than this.
The modern car has lots of problems so let's start with the sequential transmission. I do not like the fact that the old H-pattern 4 speed was taken away. The sequential has removed the possibility of a driver missing a shift so restarts and the fact that more road courses are on the schedule now doesn't really matter. I don't care that traditional manual transmissions are not selling anymore (good luck even finding one on the used market). The old straight cut gear 4-speed was one of the few things that made NASCAR still unique compared to other series even in the COT era. Taking away the old school manual ruined F1 when I was a child and it's ruining NASCAR now.
I don't mind the fact that we're slapping together a pre-built body on a pre-built chassis and trying to make things more even in the field. But the modern cars do not take damage like the old sheet metal custom built cars of the 90s. This means what used to be risky moves like putting the bumper to a guy or backing the car into the wall during a spin doesn't mean much anymore. Gone are the days of someone with a fast car at Martinsville crumpling the air ducts and losing the brakes. Now it doesn't really matter if you punt someone out of the way. You don't have any risks like a fender getting down on a tire or knocking in a crush panel (and the fumes that would come into the driver compartment as a result). If you go back and watch races from decades ago so many were decided by one little mistake that caused a tire rub or screwed up the car in some way. One little bump and suddenly you were out of the race or had a lot to overcome to get back into a position where you could end the day with a good finish.
There are a lot of other things about the modern car I dislike. It would take me all day to name them all but it basically boils down to this; Why can't we build a spec car based on the packages we had several decades ago? We can replicate that. Sure teams will figure things out as they always have but surely anything is better than what we have now. I don't really care if we go to running crate motors to cut down on costs and have less horsepower than the Panther sitting in my drive way right now. As long as the rest of the car sitting around it were decent there could still be good racing. There is no excuse for have "aero push" problems at Martinsville espescially when the Governing organization has control over each and every car in the field from top to bottom.
2) SAFETY
I'll preface this by saying that every time a driver dies I think it's a bad thing. But there is something to be said for the fact that auto racing is inheartantly dangerous and part of the reason why it was so interesting to watch is the fact that driver's were putting their lives on the line to manhandle these roaring beasts around a track. Every crappy rule in NASCAR is always justified with the same excuse: "Well we haven't lost a driver since Dale Earnhardt!"
Whenever I hear someone say that I think to myself; What would Dale Earnhardt think about where the sport is today? Considering how outspoken he was about certain packages and rules back when he was still among the living I think he wouldn't be very impressed with the direciton the sport took after his death. But I'm not going to speak for a dead man. I find it in bad taste that so many others do and use his death as justification for some of the very bad decisions that have been made over the years.
I want to talk about my biggest gripe in the rules (well multiple rules) although there are many more I could harp on. Let's talk about racing back to the yellow flag. If you watch races from the era before the "frozen field on yellow" rule you'll see that there was always a gentleman's agreement on track in that era. Driver's didn't race hard back to the yellow unless it was the end of the race. Lapped cars would sometimes race hard back and the leader might race hard to keep them down a lap. But for the most part people held their position and eased back around the track. The system worked great for decades.
This system avoided a lot of the BS we see in modern NASCAR where the yellow flag comes out and the field is "frozen". It avoided the stupid overtime rule/GWC which had probably robbed more deserving winners of a race than any other rule in the rule book. Freezing the field takes the race out of the driver's hands and put it into the hands of the officials. Who always seem to be smoking crack at any given moment and always make the worse decision that pisses off the majority of the fanbase. Unless of course a very popular fan favorite driver would be robbed. If that is the case they almost always seem to bend the rules and forget about "safety" in an attempt to avoid pissing off twitter. For examples, see Dale Jr. passing below the yellow line vs. any other driver. Or all the times they've decided not to throw the yellow near the end of a race despite yammering on about how they do it for safety for the previous 2-3 hours in a broadcast.
I wonder, if the cars are so safe now do we really need all these rules that allow for manipulation of the results? Why not race back to the yellow now if we've had no on-track fatalities since 2001? Why even have the rule if we selectively enforce it depending on who's leading? Why does it seem at least three times a year we have a scandal of some sort like a driver riding around with no secure window net or a driver disabled on track while the field comes roaring past them at full speed? Why are we still racing on "safer" configurations of tracks like the bus stop at the Glen which takes away the best passing zone? Just some things to think about.
I for one am sick of hearing about safety. I've been saying it for years and I'll say it again; There are driver's lined up around the block for a seat in one of these cars. If someone is too afraid to strap in let them get out. Someone is always willing to take their place. We all know the real reason we're using plates at super speedways is the spectical and the fact that insurance won't insure a track if the cars are going 250+mph. We all know the safety argument is mostly BS.
3) Broadcasting
This is one of my main gripes about modern NASCAR. How it's presented on television. If you go back and watch a race from say 1994 no matter what network was broadcasting it you'll see pretty much the same thing. The cameras are not zoomed in so close to a car that you can't see anything around it. They show the whole track. They pan through the entire field from time to time. They do not focus on the leader for 99% of the race even when he's turning laps seconds ahead of the field. They would show battles for position all through the field. Anyone that's gone to races in person knows that at any given moment there is at least one or two good battles happening around the track somewhere. Sometimes the battle for 15th is more exciting to watch than the leader turning laps 5 seconds ahead of the field. That's just how racing is.
I can say with all condiedence that modern NASCAR has the worst production values of any major sport in America. It seems like everything is designed by some PR company that has never attended a race in person. Last night's race at Bowman Gray is a very good example. A track so small you could throw a blanket over it and we can't see anything because the camera is zoomed so closely on the 9 car that I can see a house fly buzzing around in the ****pit.
Then we have the commericals. We'll watch the cars limp around the track under caution for 3+ laps while the announcers yammer on about something that doesn't matter. Then when it goes back under green flag we'll go to commercial for 15+ laps. "Side-by-side" commercials where the actual race is crammed into a 4x4 inch box while the rest of my screen is taken up by the obnoxious commercial for boner pills I've seen 10 times tonight already blaring symptoms and side effects at me at double the volume of the actual race. A race where I can't even hear the cars because some idiot doesn't understand how to properly set up microphones. When we come back I'm going to have to deal with a former driver screaming "WOW!!" every few seconds in my ears and yammering on about the PLAYOFF IMPLICATIONS!
The quality of the broadcast now compared to the 90s is really striking if you go back and watch those old races. Gone are the days of informed pit reporting. Good camera angles. Good commentary from the booth. But the thing that bothers me the most is the fact that we now have over triple the resolution as we had back in the SD days yet I'm seeing far less of the action because not only is the camera angle zoomed in and bad but my screen is filled with tons of crap. There is always some irrelevant information and advertisements taking up at least half of the screen. They also seem to have a hard-on for going "side-by-side" mid race and cramming the actual race into the smallest little PiP box possible while they show something no one cares about in a larger PiP box. Both of which are seperated by some kind of advertisement for something I'm never going to by that has nothing to do with racing or cars.
Go back and watch an old race. You'll usually just have a lap counter on screen somewhere and maybe a run down of the top 10 in the corner of the screen. Yet you're more informed about what's happening on track because they actually talk about it and further more they actually show it either in replay or they'll cut away from the leader for a bit to show something happening further back in the field.
The modern broadcasts are horrible. I could produce a better product in my sleep with a staff of 5 college students I plucked out of an intro to media class at the local community college.
4) The "chase for the cup"
I know this has been talked about a lot so I won't write too much about it. Much doesn't really need to be said anyway. The "playoffs" was always and will always be the most horrible thing that happened to NASCAR. NASCAR's attempt to rope in non-fans with this retarded format made the championship a farce of the highest order. I do not consider any champion after the switch from the old point system to be legitimate other than the one or two that would have won under the old system. It is not exciting. It is not interesting. It will never get NFL fans and other stick and ball sport fans into the sport.
The old system rewarded consistency and was pretty much the perfect system for a racing series. You had to be the best every weekend for the entire season to earn the cup. In my mind the playoffs has always been a lame attempt to replicate the last race of 1992. But as usual NASCAR doesn't understand why 1992 was special to the fans. It was special because it was one of those rare years where multiple drivers had a shot going into the last race. It's fondly remembered because the most unlikely driver happened to have a better day than the others on that particular day and take home the crown. It's a shame we didn't see more of him. Who knows how many he might have won if he didn't die.
I think the most annoying thing about the playoffs is hearing about it all of the time. It's pretty obvious that the announcers are instructed to talk about it as often as possible despite the fact that no one cares. It isn't even worth thinking about until the last race of the year since it's a crap shoot anyway.
5) Abandoning the fanbase, social media and greed
This is probably the most important thing; The fact that NASCAR spit in the face of the loyal people that got it where it was at the height of its popularity. I was upset when so many of the tracks near me lost dates to new ones. But I was willing to not complain too much about it because I wanted to see the sport grow. But over the years we've seen that this really didn't work out. They can't fill the stands of these tracks anymore and they lost far more of the core fanbase than they could replace. Then the come lately fans checked out too as the on-track product declined.
NASCAR isn't alone in this of course. There are plenty of other examples. Take the twice yearly Duke vs. UNC basketball games. These are big events and they had massive support from the people in the local area. But now a lot of the long time fans do not even bother to watch anymore. Do you know why? Because the game starts at 9+pm on the night before a work day for most people. This means you're up until midnight at the very least if you want to watch the game. Why does the game come on so late? So someone living on the other side of the country can watch it live and be part of the "hype". A once big time local event is now a "global" event. Yet the locals are punished if they wish to attend or watch it as it's happening.
NASCAR has done much the same. In an attempt to appeal and draw new fans they've shunned the old ones. To the point where NASCAR has insulted its core fanbase so much that many tuned out for good. People do not want to be reminded of stupid identity politics or stay up until 1+am to watch an event that is happening in their own backyard. A late start time is okay if a race is happening during the west coast swing. But a late start time when a race is happening in Daytona or anywhere on the east coast is unacceptable. I am grateful the starting times are pushed back a little (after church) and we don't have 10-11am starts anymore. But starting after say 6pm for a 4+ hour race when it'd being held in my own backyard is kind of nuts considering I work for a living and would like to get some sleep before I start work on Monday. God forbid you want to attend it in person.
Then we have the constant social media pandering. So many "new fans" that constantly bring up how we shouldn't hold a race in the state that birthed the sport because "we don't want to be associated with rednecks" or how we need more "growth" by holding races outside of the country. I guess they don't know we tried that in the 90s and it didn't work because the costs of shipping the cars+teams+spare parts+everything else is simply too high. I'd love for NASCAR to go back to Japan myself but realistically I know it isn't ever going to happen again because the burden and costs are too high. That's just how it is.
But I think what bothers me the most is this constant pandering now in an attempt to get the old core fanbase back. NASCAR is always yammering on about "going back to its roots" these days. Yet I don't ever see them apologizing for the fact that they eliminated and laid off so many people durring their "growth". They harp on about how we have one lug on wheels now instead of 5 for "safety" but we all know the real reason is they didn't want to continue paying for two men to stand in each pit box. Pretty much every job that was possible to cut was cut. Thousands of people out of work in an area that needs those jobs the most. All durring a peroid where they were making money hand over fist. Most everyone I know that used to work for a team or for NASCAR directly was laid off over the last 2 decades as a cost cutting measure. While NASCAR pats itself on the back for how great their new spec car is they never mention the hundreds of people that lost their job because of it. Then you have the track workers and everyone else that got cut over the years. All while they keep hiring more and more people to do PR and nothing jobs.
In fact, I'm sure the reason they stay zoomed in on the cars so close these days durring the broadcasts is because the sponsors demand it. Not sure why since the cars are rolling billboards anyway.
Last but not least we have all the dumb PR stunts intended to go viral on social media over the years. The Rebel flag issue. The only black driver in the field claiming he was terrified of a garage pull down rope. Now the only black owner doing his PR stunt over the charter program. On and on it goes. Any dumb tactic to get NASCAR trending on twitter and in the news. Anything but actual racing highlights.
I guess I'm just upset to see something I loved so fondly growing up turn into this. I have mostly tuned out for good and I don't think they'll ever get me back. The on-track product just isn't any good anymore for many reasons most of which I didn't even touch on here. I think the most frustrating thing is listening to people that didn't even watch racing decades ago tell me how it wasn't exciting back then because only 3 cars finished on the lead lap or how what we have now is as good as what we had back then. The whole "old good new bad you just have rose tinted glasses" argument. People that read the stats on racing reference and think they know. Sure there were some stinkers over the years but at least back then there was always something interesting happening on track and more importantly the broadcast actually talked about it. They didn't have to attempt to manufacture drama back then for ratings like they do now. When I watch modern NASCAR (and modern TV in general) I feel like I'm being sold a bill of goods by a con man. Like they think I'm so stupid that it doesn't matter if they just lie to my face. I am not a fan of the direction society in general has taken over the course of my life. Things are worse now than they were back then. More importantly people are worse now than they were back then. It's like no one is honest and genuine these days. Everyone is a social media addict looking for a fight armed with a search engine in their pocket ready to win any argument with a flurry of one-liners they heard on the internet. People do not even have original opinions anymore and they think they're experts at things they've never seen done themselevs.
This got way longer than I expected. I'm sorry for being so verbose. I just dislike the direction in general that sports and entertainment as a whole has gone over the course of the last few decades. It wasn't just NASCAR that went this direction. I don't watch hockey anymore because it suffers from basically the same thing. NFL and college football too. And college basketball. And most every other hobby I used to enjoy. It's like people forgot how to have fun and everything became overly commercialized. No one is doing anything because they enjoy it anymore. It's all just a method to grow their "brand" and make money. As a result everything is now a shell of its former glory and every event, hobby and activity is manufactured to extract the maximum amont of dollars from an every shrinking pool of spare cash. Perhaps this is the natural order of things. Maybe we need a big war and hard times for people to apperciate what's been lost. Perhaps something like NASCAR couldn't exist without a WW1 and WW2 happening in the decades before it. It seems to me that people want their cake and to be able to eat it too. They want something exciting with no risks. What happened to all the men that were willing to risk life and limb to get a kiss from the pretty girl at the end of the race? I see so many people now that want all of the glory with none of the work or risk involved. They want the money but they don't want to earn it.
I truly hope that I'm wrong and perhaps NASCAR can turn itself around and be 50% as good as it was when I was growing up. But I do not expect it to ever happen. I think it'll have to die for something better to rise up from the ashes and take its place. Perhaps a change of ownership would allow for the type of change needed to get it back on its feet. But most likely if it were to ever change hands it would just be whored out and ridden hard for the last of the profit to be extracted from it.
I am grateful this place is still here. I did enjoy lurking it for many years and the people here are nice. I'm sure some won't agree with some of the things I've said and that's okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. I'm already sure I'll get the old; "You aren't even watching it now so what do you know". That's fine too.
Take care.
I hate everything about modern NASCAR. Lately, I've been re-watching old races from the 80s-early 2000s along with the odd modern race here and there. I've noticed that pretty much everyone I know IRL that watches modern NASCAR did not watch it 20-30 years ago and were the same people that back then that turned their noses up at "rednecks going in circles for 3 hours". I think I have a pretty good handle on why things are worse now than they used to be. I'm going to try to break this out into sections to make it readable.
1) The car
Let's start with the elephant in the room and why things are so bad. I hate the modern car. I've hated the car since the COT was introduced. But compared to the modern car the COT is much better. I do not mind the fact that it's a spec car. But surely we can build a better spec car than this.
The modern car has lots of problems so let's start with the sequential transmission. I do not like the fact that the old H-pattern 4 speed was taken away. The sequential has removed the possibility of a driver missing a shift so restarts and the fact that more road courses are on the schedule now doesn't really matter. I don't care that traditional manual transmissions are not selling anymore (good luck even finding one on the used market). The old straight cut gear 4-speed was one of the few things that made NASCAR still unique compared to other series even in the COT era. Taking away the old school manual ruined F1 when I was a child and it's ruining NASCAR now.
I don't mind the fact that we're slapping together a pre-built body on a pre-built chassis and trying to make things more even in the field. But the modern cars do not take damage like the old sheet metal custom built cars of the 90s. This means what used to be risky moves like putting the bumper to a guy or backing the car into the wall during a spin doesn't mean much anymore. Gone are the days of someone with a fast car at Martinsville crumpling the air ducts and losing the brakes. Now it doesn't really matter if you punt someone out of the way. You don't have any risks like a fender getting down on a tire or knocking in a crush panel (and the fumes that would come into the driver compartment as a result). If you go back and watch races from decades ago so many were decided by one little mistake that caused a tire rub or screwed up the car in some way. One little bump and suddenly you were out of the race or had a lot to overcome to get back into a position where you could end the day with a good finish.
There are a lot of other things about the modern car I dislike. It would take me all day to name them all but it basically boils down to this; Why can't we build a spec car based on the packages we had several decades ago? We can replicate that. Sure teams will figure things out as they always have but surely anything is better than what we have now. I don't really care if we go to running crate motors to cut down on costs and have less horsepower than the Panther sitting in my drive way right now. As long as the rest of the car sitting around it were decent there could still be good racing. There is no excuse for have "aero push" problems at Martinsville espescially when the Governing organization has control over each and every car in the field from top to bottom.
2) SAFETY
I'll preface this by saying that every time a driver dies I think it's a bad thing. But there is something to be said for the fact that auto racing is inheartantly dangerous and part of the reason why it was so interesting to watch is the fact that driver's were putting their lives on the line to manhandle these roaring beasts around a track. Every crappy rule in NASCAR is always justified with the same excuse: "Well we haven't lost a driver since Dale Earnhardt!"
Whenever I hear someone say that I think to myself; What would Dale Earnhardt think about where the sport is today? Considering how outspoken he was about certain packages and rules back when he was still among the living I think he wouldn't be very impressed with the direciton the sport took after his death. But I'm not going to speak for a dead man. I find it in bad taste that so many others do and use his death as justification for some of the very bad decisions that have been made over the years.
I want to talk about my biggest gripe in the rules (well multiple rules) although there are many more I could harp on. Let's talk about racing back to the yellow flag. If you watch races from the era before the "frozen field on yellow" rule you'll see that there was always a gentleman's agreement on track in that era. Driver's didn't race hard back to the yellow unless it was the end of the race. Lapped cars would sometimes race hard back and the leader might race hard to keep them down a lap. But for the most part people held their position and eased back around the track. The system worked great for decades.
This system avoided a lot of the BS we see in modern NASCAR where the yellow flag comes out and the field is "frozen". It avoided the stupid overtime rule/GWC which had probably robbed more deserving winners of a race than any other rule in the rule book. Freezing the field takes the race out of the driver's hands and put it into the hands of the officials. Who always seem to be smoking crack at any given moment and always make the worse decision that pisses off the majority of the fanbase. Unless of course a very popular fan favorite driver would be robbed. If that is the case they almost always seem to bend the rules and forget about "safety" in an attempt to avoid pissing off twitter. For examples, see Dale Jr. passing below the yellow line vs. any other driver. Or all the times they've decided not to throw the yellow near the end of a race despite yammering on about how they do it for safety for the previous 2-3 hours in a broadcast.
I wonder, if the cars are so safe now do we really need all these rules that allow for manipulation of the results? Why not race back to the yellow now if we've had no on-track fatalities since 2001? Why even have the rule if we selectively enforce it depending on who's leading? Why does it seem at least three times a year we have a scandal of some sort like a driver riding around with no secure window net or a driver disabled on track while the field comes roaring past them at full speed? Why are we still racing on "safer" configurations of tracks like the bus stop at the Glen which takes away the best passing zone? Just some things to think about.
I for one am sick of hearing about safety. I've been saying it for years and I'll say it again; There are driver's lined up around the block for a seat in one of these cars. If someone is too afraid to strap in let them get out. Someone is always willing to take their place. We all know the real reason we're using plates at super speedways is the spectical and the fact that insurance won't insure a track if the cars are going 250+mph. We all know the safety argument is mostly BS.
3) Broadcasting
This is one of my main gripes about modern NASCAR. How it's presented on television. If you go back and watch a race from say 1994 no matter what network was broadcasting it you'll see pretty much the same thing. The cameras are not zoomed in so close to a car that you can't see anything around it. They show the whole track. They pan through the entire field from time to time. They do not focus on the leader for 99% of the race even when he's turning laps seconds ahead of the field. They would show battles for position all through the field. Anyone that's gone to races in person knows that at any given moment there is at least one or two good battles happening around the track somewhere. Sometimes the battle for 15th is more exciting to watch than the leader turning laps 5 seconds ahead of the field. That's just how racing is.
I can say with all condiedence that modern NASCAR has the worst production values of any major sport in America. It seems like everything is designed by some PR company that has never attended a race in person. Last night's race at Bowman Gray is a very good example. A track so small you could throw a blanket over it and we can't see anything because the camera is zoomed so closely on the 9 car that I can see a house fly buzzing around in the ****pit.
Then we have the commericals. We'll watch the cars limp around the track under caution for 3+ laps while the announcers yammer on about something that doesn't matter. Then when it goes back under green flag we'll go to commercial for 15+ laps. "Side-by-side" commercials where the actual race is crammed into a 4x4 inch box while the rest of my screen is taken up by the obnoxious commercial for boner pills I've seen 10 times tonight already blaring symptoms and side effects at me at double the volume of the actual race. A race where I can't even hear the cars because some idiot doesn't understand how to properly set up microphones. When we come back I'm going to have to deal with a former driver screaming "WOW!!" every few seconds in my ears and yammering on about the PLAYOFF IMPLICATIONS!
The quality of the broadcast now compared to the 90s is really striking if you go back and watch those old races. Gone are the days of informed pit reporting. Good camera angles. Good commentary from the booth. But the thing that bothers me the most is the fact that we now have over triple the resolution as we had back in the SD days yet I'm seeing far less of the action because not only is the camera angle zoomed in and bad but my screen is filled with tons of crap. There is always some irrelevant information and advertisements taking up at least half of the screen. They also seem to have a hard-on for going "side-by-side" mid race and cramming the actual race into the smallest little PiP box possible while they show something no one cares about in a larger PiP box. Both of which are seperated by some kind of advertisement for something I'm never going to by that has nothing to do with racing or cars.
Go back and watch an old race. You'll usually just have a lap counter on screen somewhere and maybe a run down of the top 10 in the corner of the screen. Yet you're more informed about what's happening on track because they actually talk about it and further more they actually show it either in replay or they'll cut away from the leader for a bit to show something happening further back in the field.
The modern broadcasts are horrible. I could produce a better product in my sleep with a staff of 5 college students I plucked out of an intro to media class at the local community college.
4) The "chase for the cup"
I know this has been talked about a lot so I won't write too much about it. Much doesn't really need to be said anyway. The "playoffs" was always and will always be the most horrible thing that happened to NASCAR. NASCAR's attempt to rope in non-fans with this retarded format made the championship a farce of the highest order. I do not consider any champion after the switch from the old point system to be legitimate other than the one or two that would have won under the old system. It is not exciting. It is not interesting. It will never get NFL fans and other stick and ball sport fans into the sport.
The old system rewarded consistency and was pretty much the perfect system for a racing series. You had to be the best every weekend for the entire season to earn the cup. In my mind the playoffs has always been a lame attempt to replicate the last race of 1992. But as usual NASCAR doesn't understand why 1992 was special to the fans. It was special because it was one of those rare years where multiple drivers had a shot going into the last race. It's fondly remembered because the most unlikely driver happened to have a better day than the others on that particular day and take home the crown. It's a shame we didn't see more of him. Who knows how many he might have won if he didn't die.
I think the most annoying thing about the playoffs is hearing about it all of the time. It's pretty obvious that the announcers are instructed to talk about it as often as possible despite the fact that no one cares. It isn't even worth thinking about until the last race of the year since it's a crap shoot anyway.
5) Abandoning the fanbase, social media and greed
This is probably the most important thing; The fact that NASCAR spit in the face of the loyal people that got it where it was at the height of its popularity. I was upset when so many of the tracks near me lost dates to new ones. But I was willing to not complain too much about it because I wanted to see the sport grow. But over the years we've seen that this really didn't work out. They can't fill the stands of these tracks anymore and they lost far more of the core fanbase than they could replace. Then the come lately fans checked out too as the on-track product declined.
NASCAR isn't alone in this of course. There are plenty of other examples. Take the twice yearly Duke vs. UNC basketball games. These are big events and they had massive support from the people in the local area. But now a lot of the long time fans do not even bother to watch anymore. Do you know why? Because the game starts at 9+pm on the night before a work day for most people. This means you're up until midnight at the very least if you want to watch the game. Why does the game come on so late? So someone living on the other side of the country can watch it live and be part of the "hype". A once big time local event is now a "global" event. Yet the locals are punished if they wish to attend or watch it as it's happening.
NASCAR has done much the same. In an attempt to appeal and draw new fans they've shunned the old ones. To the point where NASCAR has insulted its core fanbase so much that many tuned out for good. People do not want to be reminded of stupid identity politics or stay up until 1+am to watch an event that is happening in their own backyard. A late start time is okay if a race is happening during the west coast swing. But a late start time when a race is happening in Daytona or anywhere on the east coast is unacceptable. I am grateful the starting times are pushed back a little (after church) and we don't have 10-11am starts anymore. But starting after say 6pm for a 4+ hour race when it'd being held in my own backyard is kind of nuts considering I work for a living and would like to get some sleep before I start work on Monday. God forbid you want to attend it in person.
Then we have the constant social media pandering. So many "new fans" that constantly bring up how we shouldn't hold a race in the state that birthed the sport because "we don't want to be associated with rednecks" or how we need more "growth" by holding races outside of the country. I guess they don't know we tried that in the 90s and it didn't work because the costs of shipping the cars+teams+spare parts+everything else is simply too high. I'd love for NASCAR to go back to Japan myself but realistically I know it isn't ever going to happen again because the burden and costs are too high. That's just how it is.
But I think what bothers me the most is this constant pandering now in an attempt to get the old core fanbase back. NASCAR is always yammering on about "going back to its roots" these days. Yet I don't ever see them apologizing for the fact that they eliminated and laid off so many people durring their "growth". They harp on about how we have one lug on wheels now instead of 5 for "safety" but we all know the real reason is they didn't want to continue paying for two men to stand in each pit box. Pretty much every job that was possible to cut was cut. Thousands of people out of work in an area that needs those jobs the most. All durring a peroid where they were making money hand over fist. Most everyone I know that used to work for a team or for NASCAR directly was laid off over the last 2 decades as a cost cutting measure. While NASCAR pats itself on the back for how great their new spec car is they never mention the hundreds of people that lost their job because of it. Then you have the track workers and everyone else that got cut over the years. All while they keep hiring more and more people to do PR and nothing jobs.
In fact, I'm sure the reason they stay zoomed in on the cars so close these days durring the broadcasts is because the sponsors demand it. Not sure why since the cars are rolling billboards anyway.
Last but not least we have all the dumb PR stunts intended to go viral on social media over the years. The Rebel flag issue. The only black driver in the field claiming he was terrified of a garage pull down rope. Now the only black owner doing his PR stunt over the charter program. On and on it goes. Any dumb tactic to get NASCAR trending on twitter and in the news. Anything but actual racing highlights.
I guess I'm just upset to see something I loved so fondly growing up turn into this. I have mostly tuned out for good and I don't think they'll ever get me back. The on-track product just isn't any good anymore for many reasons most of which I didn't even touch on here. I think the most frustrating thing is listening to people that didn't even watch racing decades ago tell me how it wasn't exciting back then because only 3 cars finished on the lead lap or how what we have now is as good as what we had back then. The whole "old good new bad you just have rose tinted glasses" argument. People that read the stats on racing reference and think they know. Sure there were some stinkers over the years but at least back then there was always something interesting happening on track and more importantly the broadcast actually talked about it. They didn't have to attempt to manufacture drama back then for ratings like they do now. When I watch modern NASCAR (and modern TV in general) I feel like I'm being sold a bill of goods by a con man. Like they think I'm so stupid that it doesn't matter if they just lie to my face. I am not a fan of the direction society in general has taken over the course of my life. Things are worse now than they were back then. More importantly people are worse now than they were back then. It's like no one is honest and genuine these days. Everyone is a social media addict looking for a fight armed with a search engine in their pocket ready to win any argument with a flurry of one-liners they heard on the internet. People do not even have original opinions anymore and they think they're experts at things they've never seen done themselevs.
This got way longer than I expected. I'm sorry for being so verbose. I just dislike the direction in general that sports and entertainment as a whole has gone over the course of the last few decades. It wasn't just NASCAR that went this direction. I don't watch hockey anymore because it suffers from basically the same thing. NFL and college football too. And college basketball. And most every other hobby I used to enjoy. It's like people forgot how to have fun and everything became overly commercialized. No one is doing anything because they enjoy it anymore. It's all just a method to grow their "brand" and make money. As a result everything is now a shell of its former glory and every event, hobby and activity is manufactured to extract the maximum amont of dollars from an every shrinking pool of spare cash. Perhaps this is the natural order of things. Maybe we need a big war and hard times for people to apperciate what's been lost. Perhaps something like NASCAR couldn't exist without a WW1 and WW2 happening in the decades before it. It seems to me that people want their cake and to be able to eat it too. They want something exciting with no risks. What happened to all the men that were willing to risk life and limb to get a kiss from the pretty girl at the end of the race? I see so many people now that want all of the glory with none of the work or risk involved. They want the money but they don't want to earn it.
I truly hope that I'm wrong and perhaps NASCAR can turn itself around and be 50% as good as it was when I was growing up. But I do not expect it to ever happen. I think it'll have to die for something better to rise up from the ashes and take its place. Perhaps a change of ownership would allow for the type of change needed to get it back on its feet. But most likely if it were to ever change hands it would just be whored out and ridden hard for the last of the profit to be extracted from it.
I am grateful this place is still here. I did enjoy lurking it for many years and the people here are nice. I'm sure some won't agree with some of the things I've said and that's okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. I'm already sure I'll get the old; "You aren't even watching it now so what do you know". That's fine too.
Take care.
