Welcome to NASCAR county

By Bob Henry

What’s become of the NASCAR Nation? Has it slipped to simple state status or, worse, is it now but a territory? A decent-sized county even?

Reason I ask is that I’ve been following the television ratings for NASCAR’s playoff races and, like other racing fans, am a little concerned. The ratings numbers don’t look to me as if they’re trending the right way, for one thing. And, for another, the overall viewer numbers are way low.

There’s no reason to think that Moe’s Garage will be replacing any of the Fortune 500 companies on the hoods and quarter panels of the front-runners anytime soon, and that kind of retro look isn’t what any of us wants to see, whether we’re working in a boardroom, newsroom or back room.

The brainstorming behind The Chase for Whatever Brand the Cup Bears This Season was touted by the big thinkers in Daytona Beach as pure ratings genius when it was announced. Sure, we all expect a lull in the numbers during the dog days of Pocono in midsummer. But it’s playoff time now and the numbers are supposed to be among the best of the season.

Ain’t happening.

Blame it on the darned old National Football League, I guess. It’s early in that season and every team still has a chance. Maybe even the New Orleans Saints. College football, too, might be partly responsible.

I’ve got some buds who are big TV sports fans and they’ll watch pretty much whatever sport/match/game is on. They’ll click around the dial until they hit on something that holds their interest for a little while, then hang with it.

And during that aforementioned stretch of summer when the races aren’t that great but are still much better than some of the baseball games and tennis on cable, they become race fans. At least part-time race fans.

I’m thinking the marketing arm of the France family business must have been counting those guys – and million and millions more just like them – a few years back when they started claiming NASCAR had 75 million devotees. You remember, when “NASCAR dads” replaced “soccer moms” as political buzzwords and objects of the pollsters’ affections.

NASCAR was busily touting itself as the No. 2 spectator sport behind the NFL, a claim that was pretty hard to swallow when you figured there was but one Cup race a week vs. all those pro football games.

And so far this season, the Chase races are getting lapped in the ratings numbers – even if you and I are right there, the remote not firmly in hand but lost somewhere between the cushions, doing our part for the cause.

And the overall viewer numbers?  To be kind, there have been between 5 million and 7 million people watching the race on any given Sunday over the course of the lengthy NASCAR season, except for the season-opening Daytona 500.

Those would be good number if we were talking about some of the quainter nations in Europe, where 5 or 6 million people can be a crowd. But that’s not what we’ve come to expect on our side of the pond and it’s certainly well below the 75 million inhabitants of the NASCAR Nation we’ve been told about.