NASCAR – and ignorance – have migrated West
Jeff Owens
Jeff Owens has been covering NASCAR since 1991 and began covering the circuit full time in 1993. He has been with Street & Smith's Sports Group since 1998.
I’m still amazed as I travel around the country at how ignorant “serious” sports fans are about NASCAR.
I was at the San Francisco Giants baseball game Wednesday, sitting in front of a diehard Giants fan and knowledgeable baseball fan.
He was loud and boisterous and somewhat obnoxious, decked out in his colorful, Hawaiian-style shirt and orange Giants cap, making odd proclamations and yelling at nearly every play.
At one point, his friend asked him if he would watch the NASCAR race this weekend out in Napa Valley.
“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” he said. “NASCAR is just a bunch of hillbillies going in circles. I don’t watch that stuff.”
For him, I suppose ignorance is bliss, or his way of brushing off something he knows nothing about.
He would be surprised to know that at least eight drivers in Sunday’s 43-car field are from California, including some of the sport’s biggest stars. Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick, Robby Gordon, AJ Allmendinger, Scott Speed, Casey Mears and David Gilliland are all from California.
Other big stars are from the West – Kurt and Kyle Busch (Las Vegas) – or Northwest – Greg Biffle and Kasey Kahne (Washington state).
Nine drivers are from the Midwest, including Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, Jamie McMurray, Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman.
By comparison, only eight full-time Sprint Cup drivers are actually from the South.
Wonder if the obnoxious baseball fan would change his tune if he knew that most of those “hillbillies” are actually from California or west of the Mississippi River?
The sport of stock-car racing has indeed migrated West.
So has ignorance.
