November 26, 2009
By Doug Demmons
ONE: The shortest offseason in sports is upon us. That means in a matter of just a couple months the Daytona 500 will be here.
Which means Fox and boogity boogity will be back. Which means so will Digger.
One rodent was bad enough, but this year Fox gave us an entire annoying gopher family. The mind shudders at the thought of what might be next. Gophers may spread like kudzu and choke out the TV screen.
There must be a less aggravating way for Fox to sell T-shirts. How about renaming the gopher Junior after a driver who has dug a big hole for himself?
TWO: We need a fresh batch of NASCAR commercials. If it wasn’t for Tony Stewart, NASCAR commercial breaks this year would have been a complete wasteland.
Commercials that were cool the first time but are just annoying now include the Joey Logano spot where he puts together his team at the Home Depot store, the Verizon spot where Justin Allgaier gets his calling circle, the entire catalog of Kevin Harvick commercials for Shell and every last Kevin Conway commercial for Extenze.
Where have you gone, Lauren Wallace?
THREE: Jeremy Mayfield is living proof that denial is not a river in Egypt. This case doesn’t need to be tried in court. It needs to be an episode on The Jerry Springer Show.
FOUR: If qualifying is going to stay the same next year, then just get rid of it. It’s not as if that many people would care. The average middle school basketball game has more spectators than NASCAR qualifying.
The knockout format used in Formula One would make it worth watching. Yes, Formula One actually does at least one thing better than NASCAR. But just one thing.
But if that’s not doable, just eliminate qualifying. Turn Happy Hour practice into a qualifying session -- fastest time wins pole, slowest cars go home.
FIVE: Start-and-park teams are a complete embarrassment to the sport. The excuse that small teams sometimes have to start and park in order to survive is ridiculous.
If you can’t field a car that is at least mildly competitive, then you need to race in a lower series. And NASCAR needs to quit listing “vibration” or “electrical” as the reason for parking the car after five laps. Give the real reasons -- “quit” or “ran out of money.”
SIX: Can you imagine the outcry that would ensue if Brett Favre was driving the Vikings down the field and Fox cut away for a commercial? Can you imagine the hate mail that would flow if Minnesota scored during a commercial and fans only got to see it on replay?
And yet that’s what the networks routinely do to NASCAR fans. IndyCar fans get to watch side-by-side coverage and TNT occasionally tries it with a NASCAR broadcast, but I keep hearing how it’s too hard to do all the time so it must be like brain surgery or rocket science.
SEVEN: Can we please stop the hand-wringing about Talladega? After every race there is angst and soul-searching. Calls are made to send in the bulldozers and “fix” the track by reducing the banking.
Forget it. It’s not happening. The odds that ISC will spend millions to make Talladega less exciting are the same as the odds that I will win the Powerball. Much more likely is the chance that ISC will spend millions -- once the economy improves -- to increase the banking at Fontana and turn it into West Talladega.
Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow
Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougdemmons
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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