Jeff Owens: Media pressure will always be there for Junior Nation

COMMENTARY

It has been an interesting weekend for Dale Earnhardt Jr., his Hendrick Motorsports team and the tribe known as Junior Nation.

But, then again, every weekend is interesting for Earnhardt Jr. and his camp. That’s why he’s NASCAR’s most popular driver and most intriguing star and why there is a so-called Junior Nation. What other NASCAR driver has a following big enough to be classified as a nation?

Earnhardt Jr.’s trials and tribulations have been well documented this season, culminating with crew chief and cousin Tony Eury Jr.’s departure from the team last month.

Junior is trying to adjust to new crew chief Lance McGrew and desperately hoping to turn things around with perhaps a more low-key
approach.

But nothing is ever low-key around Junior, who walks daily in the shadow of his famous father and the glaring spotlight that goes with that legacy.

That is unfortunately part of the enormous challenge of being the son of one of NASCAR’s greatest drivers. (For more on the challenge of drivers following in the footsteps of their famous fathers, see Mike Hembree’s cover story in next week’s issue of NASCAR Scene.)

The ongoing saga of Earnhardt Jr.’s continued struggles heated up again this weekend when Eury Jr. returned to the track as crew chief for Brad Keselowski’s part-time Hendrick team.

The media, of course, was salivating at the opportunity to get at Eury Jr., who has been hidden and quiet since his release from Junior’s team. The obvious question for him was, what went wrong this season, leading to yet another year of struggles and prompting the dramatic break-up?

Eury Jr.’s theory?

It’s mostly the media’s fault.

Eury Jr. believes things went sour from the very beginning of the season because the media jumped on Junior for missing his pit stall during the Daytona 500 and then wouldn’t let up.

Every week it continued to pile on, criticizing Junior and his team for every misstep and leading the team into an even greater funk.

“You guys [in the media] put so much pressure on him after Daytona that Dale Jr. just basically had had enough,” Eury Jr. said. “… We went to California and we blew up, so there’s two negative weeks, and you guys were all over him, and it just brought him down.”

At first, Eury Jr.’s comments seem downright ridiculous, and Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t back him up, saying, “I don’t think anything that happens outside the car affects performance.”

It’s almost always a cop-out for competitors to blame the media for poor performance. If they allow outside media pressure and criticism
to get to them, then there is a problem somewhere with focus and concentration. Professional athletes compete in the spotlight, and they must be able to perform on that type of stage, or they don’t belong there.

Plus, the media, in most cases, is just doing its job, providing fans the coverage they want and expect about their favorite teams and athletes. Besides, without the media, the direct link between competitors and fans, they wouldn’t even have the opportunity to compete.

So Eury Jr.’s comments struck me initially as immature, unprofessional and a cop-out.

But, it goes deeper than that.

On another level, he is somewhat right.

There is no driver and no team in NASCAR who face the media scrutiny and pressure that Dale Earnhardt Jr. does.

As the son of a seven-time champion, a legend of the sport and an American sports icon, he has faced that challenge his whole career.

The pressure has been so intense and the expectations so high that they have been almost impossible to deal with and live up to.

Then there is the added pressure of being the sport’s most popular driver. He has a larger fan base than any other driver, and the media has a responsibility to keep those fans informed and to analyze, and even at times criticize, his every move. It’s what his fans deserve and expect.

Such media exposure has also paid off handsomely for Earnhardt Jr. Because of his incredible popularity, he sells more souvenirs and attracts more sponsors and endorsements than almost every driver, even when he is struggling on the track. He has made millions of dollars off his popularity and the exposure provided by the media.

Fortunately, he understands and accepts this. He knows the microscope under which he lives is the price he pays for his fame and all the fortunes that come with it.

“That’s just the way it is, that’s part of being the most popular driver in the sport,” he says.

But, still, it doesn’t make his job any easier or lessen the enormous pressure on him. He is challenged with trying to live up to his father’s huge legacy and the enormous expectations of his fans and doing it in the glaring media spotlight that chronicles and analyzes his every move.

That is practically an impossible task, and every year he struggles it just gets harder and harder.

Eury Jr. is right to say that Junior would probably perform much better if the media and fans would just back off and leave him alone, taking some of the pressure off.

But, unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. It’s unrealistic to expect that and unfair to even demand it.

The intense interest that fans and the media have in following Earnhardt Jr. comes with the territory. In a sense, it, too, is part of his
legacy and part of being the son of a famous champion, one who not only performed but excelled in a similar – though not quite as bright – spotlight. (Earnhardt, in fact, excelled as much at dodging the media as he did at dealing with it.)

As long as Earnhardt Jr. is racing, as long as he’s part of one of the sport’s most successful organizations, and as long as he remains a fan favorite and a powerful marketing machine, the spotlight is going to shine brightly on him.

And he and whoever his crew chief happens to be are going to have to learn how to deal with that and overcome it.

As long as he is Dale Earnhardt Jr., that will continue to be his greatest challenge.