Contents of the race fan's pocket

By DAVID GREEN

I guess my fellow bloggers have been as busy as I have this past week. I was thrashing through the first full week of school and working on vintage stock cars for Kentucky Vintage Racing Association's event tonight at Clayhill Motorsports in Atwood, Tenn., and didn't have much time to check the Internet. Now that I'm taking time, it looks like I didn't miss all that much, at least not in Turn 3.

Maybe that helps explain sagging television ratings and attendance for NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races. Everybody is too busy.

My sophomores read Jack Finney's short story "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket" this week. It's a tale about a young man's realization that he has been focusing too much on work and has neglected other things in his life that are important to him. We discussed in class how it's not easy to balance and find time for the things in life that you want to do, need to do, have to do.

But I don't think "we're too busy" is the full explanation for NASCAR's dilemma. 

I think part of it is overexposure. There's just an incredible volume of NASCAR, and I don't mean the kind that's measured in decibels. Everything from the number of races to the duration of the season to the variety of television and radio programs dedicated to the subject to the burgeoning stadiums where the races are staged is full tilt overload.

There's no respite, no moderation. Add more races. Raise the prize money. Raise the (supposed) value of sponsorship. Create reality shows (an oxymoron, by the way), game shows and all sorts of magazine-type programming. Build bigger grandstands. Televise practice and qualifying. More more more more more more more more more more more.

Ironically, the series of "NASCAR -- how bad have you got it?" commercials may have evoked a negative response in some fans. Like the protagonist of "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket," they may have been moved to adjust the priorities in their lives.

Part of the slump is very likely the inevitable consequence of the number of trend-chasing bandwagon jumpers who became Cup fans during the sport's big growth surge just before the turn of the century. They had no long-standing interest in the sport, no grassroots connection to it, no history of seeing local competitors make it to the big leagues.

They got their fill, grew tired of this toy, and moved on to the next big thing.

Along the way, those fair-weather fans -- and NASCAR's pandering to them -- chased away a good many of the ones who had a deeper interest in the sport. They weren't vested in the same sense as the investor (or, to use the current buzz word, "stakeholder"); they had invested their hearts and souls.

Some of the veterans who weren't offended so much by the new fans as by the inconvenience their vast numbers created turned back to the local tracks. Some just turned away.

As in every other discussion about this sport, there's an Earnhardt factor here, too. Feb. 18, 2001, was a landmark moment for many fans. This is a guess, not a report of scientific research, but I'd bet that a fairly significant number of race fans lost interest in the sport when Dale Earnhardt died. Likely, we won't hear from any of them in this blog, because they're not reading such things anymore.

All those factors, I think, have contributed to the numbers of empty seats and televisions switched to other channels.

It doesn't mean the end of the sport as we know it. Maybe it just means the sport never was really quite as big as we fancied it to be.