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August 01, 2007
Does ESPN Deserve an ESPY Award?
By Mark Young
OK gang the race we were all waiting for has come and gone. The first NEXTEL Cup race to be broadcast on ESPN had nearly as much fanfare and expectations as Dale Junior announcing his move from DEI. Many of us who remember when ESPN covered nearly all of the NASCAR Cup races had hopes that more cars back in the pack would be noticed and mentioned. NASCAR fans seem to be the most finicky fans in sports when it comes to television broadcasts, how do you think they did? What did they do right? What did they do wrong?
What do you think? Do they deserve an ESPY award?
August 1, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
I think my first complaint is how in the hell was the Brickyard 400 on ESPN and not ABC? It's one of the two biggest races in the second biggest sport in America right now and it's on cable? I don't ever remember the Brickyard being on cable.
Second is the new tool they have where they show the air on the cars. I think it's pointless if you ask me. The people that already know about how the air works won't learn anything new from that and the people that don't know anything about how the air works still won't understand it by looking at that.
As far as the actual race coverage. It's not any better or worse than FOX or TNT. Just average really.
Posted by: Ken | Aug 1, 2007 12:56:18 PM
WRONG:
- Their qualifying coverage.
They never mentioned or showed any driver that qualified during commercial breaks besides A.J. Allmendinger, who hit the wall. They occassionally mentioned when people were bumped out the field but never when someone was locked in. How about using Speed's TiVo style broadcast that shows every car run and following the go-or-go home situation more closely?
- Holding NASCAR fans hostage on Fridays and Saturdays.
ESPN only covers qualifying and happy hour, leaving NASCAR fans with nothing to watch on Friday mornings or Saturday mornings when the early practices are going on. I'm sure Speed Channel would love to televise those missing practices but ESPN won't let them because they have "exclusive rights" to all on-track action. This will change in Michigan though because ESPN isn't covering anything but the race at Michigan so Speed is going to be let back in the track to cover qualifying and ALL the practice sessions.
- Draft tracks.
Simply put, a gigantic waste of time. We understand that air in front of a car is clean air and air behind is turbulant, or dirty, air. We don't need them color-coded for us.
- The pre-race show.
The pre-race show was an unorganized mess filled with little insight about the actual race that was about to occur. Then in the final few minutes it turned into NASCAR Now, with Marty Smith appearing out of the blue to discuss the latest rumors and Tim Cowlishaw and Brad Daugherty playing a game of "In or Out of the Chase". On NN on Friday Cowlishaw predicted Dale Jr. would miss the Chase and on Sunday he predicted he would make it. Great analysis!
- Brent Musburger.
What does he add to the broadcast to earn any sort of paycheck? I respect his contributions to the sports world but he's as out of place at a NASCAR race as David Beckham would be.
- The finish of the race.
While Mark Martin, Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick and many others were having fierce battles to the checkered flag ESPN was showing us an in-car camera shot of Tony Stewart and his crew celebrating on pit road. How about waiting about 30 seconds to get to the celebration so you can show all the cars race to the line. If you're not going to show battles back in the field on the last lap you might as well never show them at all during the race. A battle for 7th place on the final lap is more important than the same battle on lap 12, so why show us the lap 12 battle and not the last lap battle?
- Kevin Harvick "not being available to the media"
Suzy Kolber explained on Sportscenter Sunday night that ESPN didn't interview Kevin Harvick because he left the track without speaking to the media. I might have believed that if I hadn't seen Bob Dillner interview him on NASCAR Victory Lane on pit road next to his car immediately after the race.
RIGHT:
- Dale Jarrett.
I'm glad ESPN asked Dale to join them for the broadcast after he missed the race. He lends a much more credible voice to the broadcast than their other studio analyst Brad Daugherty. It's a shame he didn't really get to contribute much to the broadcast until the final few laps.
Posted by: stricklinfan82 | Aug 1, 2007 1:06:55 PM
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