Maybe Some NASCAR Fans Can't Help Their Hypocrisy

(Originally published on March 22, 2008)

I've been pondering the following comments for a couple of days now, and I'm pretty sure that after people read this they'll suggest that I should have pondered away for a couple more.

But I feel the need to respond to some general complaints I've received from NASCAR fans since starting this blog. Now, I've never necessarily felt that having good sense and being a sports fan go hand-in-hand. Rooting for a person or team is an escape from reality that is supposed to detach us from our more reasonable faculties...to an extent. But some people tend to cross the line, and since in this political season declaring victory is en vogue, I've hereby elected myself to slap a few hands. You know who you are.

Complaint: Why is a guy in Long Island, New York writing about NASCAR?

That comment is dumber than the asphalt parking lot I'm looking at through the window of my office. But more than that, it's a hypocritical complaint. NASCAR fans tend to gripe that they don't get recognition as a Big Four sport in the mainstream media despite outpacing every one of them except football in many measuring sticks. And yet, when somebody sees something I write that they don't like, they throw out some "You must be too busy covering the Yankees to know anything about NASCAR" line. In other words, you beg for coverage, and then when you get it and it's not exactly what you want to hear, you ask that the offending outlet of opinion close its shop.

If you have a problem with one of my opinions, argue with me on the merits. But the whole New York thing is weak and childish. And by the way, as I've mentioned before, I'm originally from North Carolina. Don't embarrass yourself further.

Complaint: I only like the whiny corporate-sellout drivers.

No, I like professionals. This is another area where NASCAR aficionados, maybe unintentionally, become a little two-faced. Fans laud the fact that NASCAR drivers are so much more down-to-earth, accessible and good-natured than many of those who occupy the top spots in other sports. And yet, the second someone becomes too agreeable to the media, sportsmanlike or kindhearted, he has officially become a "wussy."

I will contend that many fans who support the supposed "outlaw" drivers, because they go against the grain, would dismiss the same behavior by athletes in other sports as "thuggery." And if they witnessed said thuggery with non-NASCAR loving friends at a bar, they'd respond with, "I'm glad my NASCAR drivers don't act like that." Huh?



NASCAR definitely needs conflict to stir the drink. One of my favorite moments of 2007 was seeing what would come of the Juan Pablo Montoya/Kevin Harvick scrap at Watkins Glen. But let's stop pretending that the guys who bump, cuss and aggravate a little more are so much more "grassroots" and "real" than their supposed CEO-butt-kissing counterparts. Sorry, but when Tony Stewart wins a lackey is still putting an Old Spice towel across his shoulder in a strategic signage-placement gimmick. Everybody who straps in has sold out to "the man" a little.

Complaint: I hate NASCAR, so why am I covering it?

No, I love NASCAR. If you disagree, the people I work with who I badger with unwanted info would let you know otherwise. There's a difference between loving a sport blindly and loving it enough to point out its flaws. Before too long you'll see a feature from me about a Long Islander who wrote a book about the first African-American of NASCAR, Wendell Scott. As is the case when I wrote about Richard Petty's comments about female drivers in 2006, I'll be dismissed as a raging affirmative-action liberal trying to take the sport down by mentioning some reasonable social benchmark the sport has failed to attain. But ironically, those complaints will largely be made by the same types who get so offended when they are supposedly pigeonholed as Southern white trash.

Not exactly a warm and fuzzy message, huh? But as Collin Raye said, "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."