Unlike Tiger, NASCAR Finding Right Mix With Junior

(Originally published on April 13, 2008)

Saturday afternoon, AOL.com informed me that Tiger Woods was making a major move at the Masters. After clicking on the icon, the comeback reports proved to be a hair embellished, as he was still five shots out of the lead.
This is the kind of media fawning that has created a backlash in golf. When you make Tiger the entire story, and he doesn't win or-worse yet-doesn't play, you've rendered the sport irrelevant.
The PGA Tour has done practically nothing of note to combat this image, showing willingness to ride the Tiger train and roll with the rough ratings when he's not stealing the show.
NASCAR, in essence, has dealt with the same problem in reverse. When Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon didn't make the Chase in 2005, the NASCAR community thumped its collective chest as the sport where any of 20 drivers could carry the ball of capturing the country's imagination, even if that feeling was, at best, a naïve notion.
What has ensued is a sometimes-curious marketing philosophy. When the launch of NASCAR HotPass was first announced, a NASCAR official cautioned me that Junior would not be one of the featured drivers every race. The fear of overexposing a guy who still hadn't won a championship was palpable.
Only thing is, that's a little bit like having Arnold Palmer play a practice round at 4:30 in the morning because he won't win and you're afraid he's going to outshine the hot young Norwegian whose name no one can pronounce. It's one thing to try to promote other guys. But it's another thing to try to marginalize the biggest star in the sport in the process of creating parity.
When it comes to Junior on HotPass, I would equate that to Arnie's Army, a group that has created such a personal bond with an athlete that they want to share in every moment regardless of the end result. To deprive them of that accomplishes nothing.
Junior has been on the HotPass every week in 2008. It's a sign that NASCAR is doing a better job with the Junior balancing act than the PGA is doing with Woods.
* NASCAR writers must be hating Jeff Burton for making points so lucid in 30-second sound bites that 700-word op-ed pieces are unnecessary-in this case the issue being Aaron Fike's admission that he was racing while on heroin. On ESPN2's NASCAR Now Saturday, Burton broke down how baseball failed to be proactive with drug testing and the albatross the sport has hanged itself with because of digging its head in the sand. For NASCAR to put itself in that same perilous position when, unlike baseball, the participants are lockstep in their willingness to test away for safety and the general well-being of the sport, is crazy. As usual following a Burton comment, enough said.
* We'll soon know how much of a bear market it is for finding sponsorship. David Gilliland finished 14th in his bare Ford Fusion in a race right before an off week to woo suitors. If that can't open up the eyes in one company, then it would be fair for Yates Racing to panic.