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Keep those victory lane comments clean, boys

By DAVID GREEN

Ah, Talladega -- when, to paraphrase Alfred, Lord Tennyson, young men's fancies turn to thoughts of bump-drafting and "the big one." And to watching your potty-mouth in victory lane.

Has anybody noticed how the fortunes of one Dale Earnhardt Jr. have kind of -- uh -- gone down the toilet ever since he uttered that infamous s-word in victory lane in October 2005 and a NASCAR fine knocked him out of the lead in the first Chase for the Cup? Junior slipped from first to fifth by the time the season ended, and times have been hard for the Budweiser team ever since.

Coincidence, or karma? Or some other combination of factors?

For faithful fans of Junior, it's either all a bad dream, a prolonged slump from which the No. 8 team will soon rise, or the fault of the overzealous NASCAR language police, whose penalties knocked their team off its stride.

For critics of the scion of the Earnhardt family, it's proof that, just as they always suspected, Junior never will be the driver his daddy was.

For the politically correct and the prudish, it's a signal NASCAR is doing a good job by attempting to protect the public from foul language.

As for me, I don't claim to know what has caused the flagship DEI entry to flag. But I do have my own thoughts on the matter of policing the language. The late John Wayne was one of my heroes, and he certainly used his fair share of "damns" and "hells" and such mild profanity. My own language has never been very pristine, although I am trying to work on that.

I really don't see the need for NASCAR's concern over this matter. When a driver does something such as Dale Jr. did at Talladega, I think it would be adequate for the sanctioning body to issue a statement to the effect of, "We regret that one of our competitors has used language that we feel is not appropriate for the audience we are trying to cultivate. We understand the passion that drives these competitors and that circumstances sometimes cause them to behave in ways that are deviant from their norms and our standards. We hope fans will understand this is a reflection on them as individuals and not on our sport as a whole, and we urge our competitors to do a better job of vocabulary managment when their remarks can be overheard by others."

I understand that the matter goes beyond NASCAR, and I know about the watchdog agencies that complain to government regulatory folks as well as auto racing organizations every time somebody says something a little more off-color than Sheriff Andy Taylor. I respect those folks' point of view. As a high school teacher, I cannot condone the use of foul language by students and I have to hold myself to a similar high standard.

Nevertheless, I don't think it's a coincidence that as policital correctness has become more and more paramount, our society has become more and more crude and crass. The more someone attempts to sanitize things, the more someone else cries "foul" (or some other four-letter word beginning with "f") -- kind of a cultural version of Newton's Third Law.

If that's accurate, then the PC fanatics are doing as much to make society vulgar and insensitive as the rap/hip-hop industry -- and NASCAR's attempts to micromanage the language of its competitors merely call more attention to the occasional slips and aggravate those who are not offended by them.

Maybe if we all took a more reasonable view of offensive language and stopped pampering those with thin skins, there would be a diminished compulsion to be provocative for the sake of provocation.

As for the talents of Dale Jr., I don't think it's any particular insult to Junior to suggest that he's not quite as superb a driver as the Intimidator was; the same could be said about 95 to 98 percent of drivers nowadays, in my opinion. You could be pretty danged good and not be as good as ol' Dale.

IROC at Eldora: Perfect plan

By DAVID GREEN

Too bad there hasn't been more follow-up publicity about Tony Stewart's idea to bring the International Race of Champions (IROC) to Eldora Speedway, the half-mile dirt oval in northwestern Ohio owned by Stewart.

Stewart proposed bringing IROC to Eldora after he won the second round of this year's four-race series April 7 at Texas Motor Speedway. "I really believe Eldora is capable of hosting that event and doing a nice job," the reigning Nextel Cup champ said.

I hope the lack of attention since then is merely the consequence of ongoing routine coverage of a busy racing season, not an indication that Stewart's idea has been shot down. It's a terrific idea.

It isn't difficult to find criticism nowadays of IROC. Jay Signore's series is vulnerable on a couple of points.

IROC began as a fascinating, innovative series that involved a truly international cast of championship-winning drivers, competing in Porsche Carrera RSR racing cars. The series opened with three races in October 1973 at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway in California and closed with a finale on the Daytona road course in February 1974 as part of Speedweeks.

The cast included Brazil's Emerson Fittipaldi, the 1972 Formula One champion who would go on to win another F1 title in '74; Denis Hulme of New Zealand, another F1 competitor; A.J. Foyt (then still waiting for his fourth Indianapolis 500 victory), Bobby Unser, Gordon Johncock and Roger McCluskey from USAC; David Pearson, Bobby Allison and Richard Petty from NASCAR; and road racing aces Mark Donahue, Peter Revson and George Follmer.

Donahue won two of the three Riverside events and captured the Daytona race to claim the first championship. Revson finished second in the final standings, with Unser third, Pearson fourth and Follmer fifth, giving the SCCA three of the top five drivers. Pearson, whose second-place finish in Round 2 was the best showing by a NASCAR competitor, surprised many from the international racing community with his prowess on something other than an oval, driving something other than a stock car.

IROC has gone to the opposite extreme now, having morphed into an American oval-track, NASCAR-themed clash of drivers almost exclusively from U.S.-based racing series. Englishman Dan Wheldon, the reigning Indy Racing League champion, and Champ Car titlist Sebastien Bourdais of France both declined invitations this year, so the 2006 lineup does not even feature a full lineup of American racing series champions.

Throughout its history, IROC has never been a perfect showcase. Its original all-road course format and the mid-engine Porsche machine tilted the playing field in the direction of the drivers who ended up dominating it. Nowadays, it heavily favors NASCAR.

Much of the luster is gone because of the absence of the drivers who would legitimize the "international" in the series name. This year's 12-driver lineup includes two Italians, Max Papis and Max Angelelli, and one South African, Wayne Taylor. Papis and Taylor live in Florida and Angelelli lives in Monte Carlo, Monaco, and all three are in IROC via their competition in the Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series.

Signore's challenge is an immense one. It's all but impossible nowadays to accommodate the scheduling and other demands of a lineup of drivers comparable to that dream-team cast of 1974. No matter what type of racing equipment might be used, it would favor one or another set of drivers, and it just would not be feasible to feature races in different types of cars in a single series.

But it would be possible to utilize just about any type of racing venue, and if IROC is destined to remain a U.S.-themed event, what better idea than to include a dirt oval on its schedule -- and what better dirt oval than Eldora?

Stewart has signed Crown Royal, the whiskey brand that sponsors the IROC series, as a sponsor for one of Eldora's signature events, the 23rd annual Kings Royal sprint car event July 15. Here's hoping he can leverage that into an IROC round at Eldora, and the sooner, the better.

The Busch Series dilemma

By DAVID GREEN

The topic is not quite, but almost, as old as the division itself: Just what are we to make of this Busch Series thing?

David Poole alludes to the dilemma in his recent article “7 weeks, 7 NASCAR lessons,” posted Friday. Week 8 added nothing new to the debate. In the first eight races of the NASCAR Busch Series season, there have been eight different winners -- and all of them have been Nextel Cup Series regulars.

That sums up the heart of this quandary and also blunts the comparison of Busch Series racing to triple-A minor league baseball. You just don’t see the stars of the major leagues when you buy a ticket to a Louisville Redbirds or Richmond Braves game.

The stars fit neatly into the argument on two sides of the question. They are one of the greatest assets or one of the greatest liabilities of the Busch Series, depending upon your point of view.

For most of the 1990s, I was one of the most vocal advocates of the Busch Series, pushing coverage ideas and philosophies to editors at the publications where I worked as a motorsports journalist and argued on behalf of the regular competitors in this second-tier but hardly second-class league.

I became Busch Series editor of the publication then known as Winston Cup Scene and twice was privileged to present the award to the most popular driver at the series awards ceremony. (One of the awards went to my alter ego, that other David Green, the one from Owensboro.)

I got to know the men and women who made up the heart of the series quite well, developed solid relationships with them and maintain a high level of regard for those folks, the ones who have moved on up in the hierarchy of NASCAR racing and those who still compete in the Busch Series.

But I never quite came up with an answer to the Buschwhacker question.

A little history: The Busch Series, formed in 1982, replaced the old Sportsman Division. It took a loosely connected confederation of local racetrack competition, special events at major speedways, and hundreds of competitors and transformed it into a coherent touring series, not quite national in scope.

Instead of having to chase championship points in a helter-skelter schedule, drivers could follow a regular schedule of events, going from track to track just like the Cup teams did. At the end of the season, a champion would be crowned as a result of those events.

The Sportsman Division was formed in 1950, one year after Strictly Stock (later Grand National and Winston Cup, now Nextel Cup) was launched and two years after NASCAR’s formation. It gave NASCAR three major series, along with the original Modifieds.

Sportsman cars differed from Grand National in that they were not current-model vehicles and they could be altered to a greater extent. They were not as radical as the Modifieds, however. For events on large speedways, many drivers utilized former Grand National equipment, cars that were obsolete by the Grand National criteria (current model year and two most recent years only).

Busch cars went in several evolutionary directions. At first, they were staple short-track cars with Pontiac Ventura and Chevy Nova bodies and small (about 300-cubic-inch, or 5-liter) V8 engines. There was an era in which the series became a sort of scaled-down Cup car, with new versions of smaller cars in the manufacturers’ product range and with V6 power.

But then the philosophy changed, and the cars became more and more similar to Cup vehicles. The V6 experiment ended in the mid 1990s, less than a decade after then-NASCAR President Bill France Jr. had erroneously predicted that the Cup Series would eventually feature V6s.

Now, the equipment in Cup and Busch is virtually indistinguishable to the casual or even reasonably knowledgeable fan. Only the series decal near the base of the “A” roof pillar and other such adornment gives it away.

Once upon a time, drivers such as Dale Earnhardt fielded Busch Series teams of their own and raced on Saturdays in “busman’s holiday” additions to their Cup schedules. Now, in addition to some driver-owned enterprises, all major Cup teams have full-blown Busch Series components.

In 2001, Kevin Harvick was abruptly promoted from the Richard Childress Racing Busch Series team to take the ride left vacant by the death of the great Earnhardt. Rather than abandon his Busch Series endeavor, Harvick competed full-time in both series, winning the Busch Series championship title and the Cup Series rookie award. Nowadays, it is commonplace for rising-star Cup drivers to run a full Busch schedule.

The venues have changed, as well. Gone are the smaller tracks such as Hickory, South Boston and others.

As would be expected, established Cup stars have always fared quite well, but never have they dominated the series as they do nowadays. Busch Series journeymen, such as Jack Ingram, Sam Ard, Tommy Houston, Jimmy Hensley and others were formidable against Cup drivers in equal equipment, but nowadays, there seems to be less and less opportunity for modern-day versions of such professionals. The Busch Series is made up of rising-star wannabes and already-established Cup stars, and it really has no stars of its own.

Busch drivers of the past two decades weren’t just being politically correct when they claimed that racing against the Cup stars helped them polish their own skills, and just about all of them correctly surmised that it helped Saturday’s crowd to have a half-dozen or so Cup regulars in the field.

Maintaining the perfect balance, in which Cup stars were present but did not totally rule the Busch Series world, was always elusive. Nowadays, it seems not even to be a concern.

What should be done? What will be done? Don’t ask me.

Busch is becoming more and more a second Cup series. Once upon a time there was an argument that there would eventually be two Cup series, like the American and National baseball leagues, with some sort of World Series-like championship. Sounds like a perfect solution to the problem of demands for expansion of the sport and how to make the Chase for the Cup a more compelling and more legitimate playoff.

Traditionalists, of course, hate the idea. Bill France Jr. claimed there would never be two equal series.

That’s the same Bill France who said the Cup cars would be powered by V6s by 1995 or so.

Sport versus entertainment

By DAVID GREEN

Listening to some of the comments made in the aftermath of the recently completed college basketball tournaments, I couldn't help thinking of NASCAR's green-white-checkered rule. To some, apparently, there's no way a 73-57 game can be a good, entertaining one. To qualify as good and entertaining, a 78-75 overtime decision is a requirement.

Hey -- if the NCAA had NASCAR's mentality, they'd find a way to reduce those big deficits and set up a thriller of a conclusion every time.

After all, those fans paid good money to watch that Final Four championship game and they deserve to be entertained, not be subjected to a boring, blowout game -- right?

Sorry. I'm not buying the argument -- not from college basketball observers, nor from NASCAR followers who have gotten what they wanted.

I'm not sure how anybody could object to the men's championship game Monday night. Florida played magnificently, showing the best overall execution of any champion in some time. UCLA did not quit trying its best to overcome a superior opponent until the final seconds.

There was no abject failure on the part of any of the participants. It merely turned out that one team performed at a very high level of efficiency. Everybody who watched got his or her money's worth. Surely, UCLA fans and Gator haters were disappointed at the outcome, but the game -- score notwithstanding -- was not a "bad" one.

Not even in comparison to the women's championship the next evening, in which Maryland survived an extra five minutes before clinching its first national title.

Of course, spectators in the grandstands and television viewers alike had a higher level of excitement as the finish of the Maryland-Duke game loomed. That was because such nail-biting conclusions are NOT guaranteed. Sometimes, the better team wins by 16 points. When you get a 78-75 overtime game, it's a treat, not an everyday occurrence.

Likewise, a race does not have to have a by-a-nose finish or two lead changes every lap to be entertaining. How is it not entertaining to watch a heated battle for position in which the challenger never makes the pass? How is it not entertaining to watch the excellence of a driver who has everything just right and whips the field?

The finish of Sunday's DirecTV 500 at Martinsville was one of those spontaneous, legitimate late-race shootouts. The yellow flag was required, and it left just enough time for the race to be decided under green-flag conditions.

The rule calling for one attempt to produce a finish under green-flag conditions is not the worst thing that could happen to NASCAR racing. But it is a step in a bad direction -- pandering to the spoiled-brat mentality of the fan who thinks he "deserves" something special.

In my opinion, the fan gets something special every time the green flag waves or the opening tap starts the game clock. Each race, each game, is what it turns out to be.

Fans who cannot accept that should stick to the so-called "reality" shows. Producers of those programs will make sure viewers are never disappointed.

NASCAR on television

By DAVID GREEN

It's 10 a.m. (Central Daylight Time) Sunday morning and, in the background, I can hear Kenny Wallace, Jimmy Spencer and others discussing the latest developments in the NASCAR soap opera. I'm not at the racetrack; I'm at home, in gym shorts and a Frank Hawley's NHRA Drag Racing School T-shirt, barefooted, at the keyboard of my home computer. The discussion I'm listening to comes from my television set.

Wow. When I first became interested in this sport, that kind of thing was unimaginable.

In those days, of the major television networks only ABC, with its Wide World of Sports anthology series, seemed aware of the existence of automobile racing. Four or five times a year, I would get to see edited videotape of some NASCAR race, held a couple of weeks earlier at Darlington or Charlotte or some other track. And I was tickled pink to get it.

So, I don't want to sound ungrateful for the TV coverage that's now available. However, after a prompt from Larry in response to my last blog item, I would like to offer a few comments about it.

Take these comments with a grain of salt. They represent one fan's opinions.

As far as I'm concerned, the best thing going on now is Speed's coverage of Formula One. Bob Varsha, David Hobbs and Steve Matchett are the best broadcast-booth trio since Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell and Don Meredith were doing Monday Night Football. Part of the quality of this coverage is in step with the smaller scope of an F1 event -- half as many cars, half as many races, each race half as long in comparison to the typical NASCAR event.

So, the challenge for the NASCAR broadcast team is a greater one. And for the most part, today's coverage is at least as good as the coverage of other sports, if not better.

I'm skipping all the magazine, pre-race, post-race and other ancillary programming to concentrate on live coverage of NASCAR events. Here's what bugs me:

• OVERKILL -- Belaboring of a point by commentators, excessive use of "gimmick" camera angles, over-the-top description or analysis. Some repetition is inevitable, but as we make a point for the 12th or 13th time of the afternoon, let's be more economical with the time we devote to it and let's be a little more creative and less redundant in how we describe it. Let's come to the realization that on-board angles can be dramatic and entertaining but sometimes they offer the worst possible vantage point to show what is happening at the moment. So, let's use them for alternative replay angles or to fill time when nothing compelling is going on. Let's leave the hype to the magazines, pre-race, post-race and other ancillary programming.
• OMISSIONS -- Failing to follow up on storylines that may develop during an event, coming back from a commercial break only to find the caution period ended several seconds (or several laps) ago, failing to show a battle to the finish line for a position other than first. If we raise a point or pose a question, let's follow it up -- or at least tell the viewer why we couldn't answer what we asked. Let's do a better job of working with the sanctioning body and the advertisers to ensure that we don't fail to cover important moments such as restarts. Let's give the audience credit and assume they're capable of realizing on their own that the winner's pit crew members are celebrating; let's show the side-by-side battle for third place instead of the celebration.
• VAUDEVILLE -- If I wanted stand-up comedy, I'd be watching a comedy channel, not a NASCAR race. It's fine to have some moments of levity, but sometimes the yuk-yuk gets a little out of hand. Ratchet it down just a tad, please.
• INFORMATION, PLEASE -- Via audio and graphic display, give me information I can really use. One of the least-useful tools is the crawl across the top of the screen showing the 43-car running order. Instead of the crawl, which shows at most four or five drivers' names at a time, how about showing it vertically, so that one-third or more of the field is visible at a glance? The important information at any point in the race includes the top five cars, the position in which your favorite driver is running and cars out of the race. Until we have fully interactive television, providing information about "your favorite driver" is going to be serendipitous, but there's no reason why we can't have a constant graphic showing the top five cars regardless of what the onscreen image may be. That would be a much better use of the horizontal crawl.

The biggest complaint I have against the announcers is their inability to recognize the difference between subjective and objective pronouns ("between HIM and the second-place car," not "between HE and the second-place car") and similar grammatical misadventures, but that's a malady that affects just about all broadcasters, it seems, not just those who do motorsports. (Interestingly, this seems NOT to be a problem for the Varsha-Hobbs-Matchett combo. Keep it up, guys; at least one English teacher is watching.)

Fox and NBC both do some really great stuff with their coverage. Theirs is a very demanding job, done under the pressure of real-time demands.

I don't envy them in their effort to please the masses, and I thank them for their efforts to bring me my favorite sport -- live rather than a couple of weeks old, and without expecting me to sit through equal portions of figure skating, lumberjacking and track-and-field events before I can enjoy it.