Losing Cup Points Would Solve "Busch Series" Mentions Real Fast

(Originally published on April 9, 2008)

PR reps and broadcasters alike started out 2008 dropping coinage in jars when accidentally slipping up on NASCAR's new monikers. Nextel...uh, Sprint. Busch...uh, Nationwide. It was pretty harmless and obviously unintentional.
But we're now long enough into the season where people should start getting it right pretty consistently. And without naming names, it seems like a lot of Cup regulars who dabble in the Nationwide Series aren't even trying.
How long is it going to take before you stop explaining how the Busch car is doing in practice, or talking on Sunday morning about how the Busch race went the day before? Everybody in the garage wants to complain about the rising costs in NASCAR. But then some of the top drivers in the sport blow off Nationwide, a company that is helping foot the bill for there to be a No. 2 series, simply because it's so much harder mentioning a name with all of two more syllables.
The time for laughing off the error is over. Somebody can lose 25 points for uttering an expletive under "actions detrimental to stock car racing." Well, is it not more detrimental to the sport when its big corporate contributors are irate because they're not getting the sponsor mentions they're paying for? Giving a points penalty for someone who shows a pattern of mentioning the wrong sponsor seems reasonable.
Problem is, docking Cup carpetbaggers 25 Nationwide points when they're not running the full schedule means little or nothing. But if they're going to show so little respect toward a series that they want to make extra money in but have no allegiance for, then they've acted poorly enough to earn a 25-point Cup penalty.
Nobody wants to see it get to that point. But when we get to the second half of the season and somebody driving his ninth Nationwide Series race of the season calls it "Busch Series" five times in a weekend to the press, give the guy a warning. Chances are that will solve the problem. If not, hit him the only place it'll get his attention, since these guys make too much green for fines to give them a moment of clarity.
More than anything, the Cup guys are screwing over the Nationwide-only guys, who have enough problems giving the series the identity it needs to woo sponsors. Now's it being called two different things, which makes that recognition even harder.
* My first reaction to Aaron Fike's admission that he did heroin on race days was to applaud him for finally being honest, and to wonder if the first steps in a long path to reinstatement were negotiated. Then I thought, "If somebody called the cops and said they murdered four people and had them buried in their backyard, would we be cheering the guy for coming clean and talking about how we could rehabilitate him?" Doing that stuff on a race day is NASCAR's equivalent of mass murder. We could forgive the killer, but we'd certainly never let him out of jail. And NASCAR can never let Fike back on a track.
* Did you see "Jimmy Johnson's" appearance on American Idol Wednesday night. No, not the ex-Cowboys coach. It was Mr. 48, Jimmie Johnson, only they spelled his name wrong in the graphic underneath him. Everybody's having a problem with names these days.