Interesting interview with Ricky Rudd on Nascar today.
Ricky Rudd...this is just an excerpt:
Your thoughts on the Chase format?
It's not bad. It's different. All attention and media is put toward that effort after the first 26 races, where the rest of the guys don't exist. If I'm a sponsor spending money for 36 races, I'd feel cheated.
I'd say we'll sponsor you for 26 races, and if you make the cut we'll pay the for the other 10. If not we'll stop funding at 26 races. That's some of the potential negative consequences I see coming. There are positives, too, though. It keeps fan interest right up to the end.
There are a lot of things right about the sport. One of the things that's wrong now is it seems that with the tremendous money from TV, NASCAR no longer controls the sport like they once did. It's like a TV series, like a Desperate Housewives or whatever. That's not all bad, but what happens if it's not working anymore? TV creates the stars now.
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http://www.nascar.com/2005/news/opinion/11/23/rrudd.smith.column/index.html
[Marty Smith] ..... With that, Rudd and I traded Happy Thanksgiving wishes and went on our respective ways. Then, minutes later my phone rang again. Ol' Rooster was riled up.
[Ricky] The bottom line on the points deal is there's way too much emphasis on watching points accumulate, whereas in the old days TV covered the racing on the racetrack. Fans want to see racing. They don't want to count points. They want to see the action on the track, and the cameras used to go where the action was on the track. I get it over and over and over again from fans on my website that they're losing out on the racing action on the track because television is always showing the top 10, and not the action.
It's also gotten way too political. It's about whose sponsor buys network time and whose doesn't. I miss the old way.
[Marty] Many fans agree, Ricky. They yearn for the old way, too. And on many levels.
I am one of this group of fans. What counts here? .... Racing, or the personalities? I dare say, that when raceday comes, it's the racing that brings most of the fans to the track. When I'm at the track, I watch from two to five or more seperate races on different parts of the track. That's how I learned about racing from my father and grandfather. The TV coverage is on the top ten, and only if another driver wrecks or gets in the picture by accident some way, do they mention the rest. I grew up listening to the races on the radio, when there wasn't TV coverage, except for the occasional Wide World of Sports segments, which were only a portion of a race. The announcers for MRN and PRN do a fantastic, sometimes amazing job, of race coverage. They've been doing it much the same way for over thirty years. I usually have the TV muted, and listen to the radio coverage, on raceday. I have quite a few friends that do the same. I hope ABC gets the coverage that NBC has now.