Jared Turner: How NASCAR racing could improve in 2009
COMMENTARY
By some accounts, the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup season wasn’t one of the more thrilling campaigns in recent memory.
Stagnant TV ratings and declining race ticket sales, a disappointing Chase For The Sprint Cup and the downturn of once fan-favorite teams such as Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Petty Enterprises came together to make the year a trying one for the sport in many ways.
But just as the 2008 season may not have lived up to some expectations, the 2009 campaign could be one for the ages.
Here are five possibilities (there are more) for the coming season that could each help render 2008 a distant memory:
1. If Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins multiple races and seriously contends for the title, NASCAR will see a spike in just about every area that’s good for the sport.
Nothing, and I repeat, nothing, would inject more excitement into fans than for NASCAR’s most popular driver to have a career season. It is likely no coincidence that enthusiasm - as evidenced by sagging TV ratings and attendance - began to wane during the 2008 season right about the time that Earnhardt Jr. began to struggle in midsummer.
Just as the Hendrick Motorsports driver never fully recovered from his midseason slump, neither did the enthusiasm that accompanied the beginning of the year.
2. NASCAR must have a new champion in order to make up for 2008.
While Earnhardt Jr. winning the title would be a match made in heaven for generating buzz, what’s even more important for the sport is that Jimmie Johnson not claim a fourth straight crown. No disrespect to Johnson; he is a worthy and humble champion who has deserved and earned all of his accolades.
But variety is still the spice of life, and NASCAR is no exception to that rule. That is, nobody likes to see the same driver or team win all the time. Even though Johnson would make history by becoming the first driver to win four straight championships, the smooth-talking California native taking another title might just disillusion the Southern good -ol’-boy-type fans for good.
3. At least one real rivalry must materialize.
In 2008, there were several fleeting feuds – Kevin Harvick-Carl Edwards at Charlotte in October, Edwards-Kyle Busch at Bristol in August, Tony Stewart-Kurt Busch at Daytona in February – but none ever reached its full potential.
In fact, the only one that really even really carried over beyond one race was Harvick-Edwards, who traded barbs at Talladega and shoves the next weekend at Charlotte.
A good rivalry that extends over the course of the 2009 season would help appease the traditional fans who came to love the sport in part because of the rivalries that infused the '70s, '80s and early '90s.
4. NASCAR desperately needs a tight, down-to-the-wire battle for the championship, which there hasn’t been since 2004.
Give the sanctioning body its due credit on this one. The implementation of the Chase format in 2004 was supposed to remedy this, but it hasn’t. Since that inaugural Chase season, championship races have been anticlimactic at best and downright awful at worst. If the 2009 season produces another snoozer of a finale, NASCAR might seriously consider adding a new twist or two to its playoff format.
No fan – old or new – wants to watch a finale in which a driver needs to only start his motor and stay out of harm’s way to collect the points needed to clinch the title.
5. Fighting may not be politically correct, but it has a way of luring spectators to the stands, or at least to the couch in front of their TV set on race day.
When the 2008 season opened with Kurt Busch and Stewart allegedly exchanging blows before the engines even fired for the Daytona 500, there was a layer of suspense and controversy added to Speedweeks that only enhanced the excitement already surrounding the 50th running of NASCAR’s biggest race.
But once the dust settled at Daytona, there were few other brawls of note – at least in Sprint Cup – over the rest of the season, excepting the heretofore-mentioned exchange between Harvick and Edwards at Charlotte.
Imagine where the sport would be today if Cale Yarborough hadn’t slugged it out with brothers Bobby and Donnie Allison after the 1979 Daytona 500, the first race ever televised in its entirety to a national audience?
Several fistfights could go a long way in helping 2009 atone for what some observers viewed as a dull 2008 season.
