Fifty-year-old Mark Martin captured the checkered flag in the inaugural re-running of the Southern 500 last night, although in many news reports the race was given a generic “NASCAR Sprint Cup Series” designation.
In fact, our ESPN News ticker referred to the race as “NSCS Darlington” last night, in reference to the South Carolina speedway where it is held.
“Southern?”
That word was hardly anywhere to be found.
Also, the network’s coverage of Martin’s victory also neglected to call the race by its proper name, burying a reference to one of Martin’s previous “Southern 500″ wins deep in its official recap of the race.
Interesting.
We wrote a story yesterday that referenced the short shrift this race, racetrack and state have been given by NASCAR in recent years, but this is different.
Have we seriously gotten to the point where the word “Southern” is offensive? You know, something that PIO’s gloss over and news editors tell their reporters to bury or outright ignore?
Look, we know NASCAR is trying to fill half-empty tracks out in California, but is alienating its core constituency really going to accomplish that?
For once, we have a race that wasn’t whored out to some corporate sponsorship, that was run on a track with real history and that was watched by a packed house of real racing fans … and there’s somehow something wrong with that?
There’s also the curious fact that NASCAR chose to announce the high-profile suspension of driver/ owner Jeremy Mayfield for a failed drug test just two hours prior to the start of the race.
Not surprisingly, that announcement sucked up a huge amount of coverage that would have ordinarily gone to the “NSCS Darlington” race.
Which means sports fans are talking about NASCAR cracking down, not NASCAR geography … all part of the clever plan, no doubt.
Don’t get us wrong, we can’t stand NASCAR.
We all have IQ’s over 40, it turns out, which means we can only watch cars go ’round in circles for so long before we blow our brains out.
And we also can’t stand prejudiced people – be they red, yellow, black or white.
But “Southern” isn’t prejudiced, which means it’s not something that should be stuck in the PC drawer or drowned out with a major announcement that seems to have been intentionally-timed to break up a news cycle.
“Southern” was the name of this race, whether NASCAR liked it or not.
By Calhoun Fawls May 11, 2009 at 3:38 am
Auto racing is like politics, only those ignorant of all that goes into it find it boring, stupid, etc.
There is a lot of science that goes into modern racing in the stock car and Indy car level. Further, the competition made automobiles safer over the years for the general public.
I guess is the competition that really hooks me. Each race is a like a political campaign. There is preparation, money, strategy, guts, stamina, and just plain dumb luck that gets factored in. Like a campaign works to makes sure its candidate wins, a race team works to make its driver win. But, instead of a handful or competitors, there are forty six week in week out. If you watch not how those drivers drive around a track, but how they move against one another, racing in any league becomes very interesting indeed.
Take Mark Martin. He is older. He is lowkey. He is not out clubbing with Dale Jr. or flamboyant. He will not bash other drivers. Yet, he works out with weights, eats healthy, studies race tracks and their tendencies and knows how and why his car works and is stubborn on his patience and moves on the race track. Sort of reminds me of Mark Sanford in that regard back in 2002 when you were on the Sanford “pit crew” in politics. I am guessing your IQs are a little above 40. :)