Mike Hembree: The NFL toys with the Daytona 500
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers compete during this year's Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway. // Geoff Burke, Getty Images for NASCAR
COMMENTARY
MARTINSVILLE, Va. – For those who’ve been just too darn cold at the Daytona 500 in recent years, cheer up. The National Football League appears to be coming to your aid.
The suits who run the NFL appear to be close to extending their season deep into February, adding games here and there in an attempt to feather their bed even more. The NFL is the Godzilla of professional sports and, even in this sour economy, can do generally whatever it wants. It might be the personalities, the uniforms, the team logos, the competition – whatever. It’s working.
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t mess with the NFL.
In some of its more impulsive moments over the past decade or so, NASCAR has offered up the idea that it has an interest in challenging the NFL in such things as popularity, television numbers, public perception, etc. So far, this has gone about as well as a snowball fight in Miami Beach in mid-August.
There is little chance that any other professional sport will seriously challenge the NFL for national dominance in the foreseeable future. Although they stumble now and then and have periodic image issues (see the Michael Vick file), the people who run the sport have done most things right, and there is no question that the American masses love it. Their product is slick and refined, their facilities are truly major league and their stars are larger than life.
Now the NFL is threatening to put its Big Event, the Super Bowl, on the same Sunday as NASCAR’s Big Event, the Daytona 500. If the NFL season is extended – and there is every reason to believe it will, the moneychangers having seen the potential of a longer schedule – it is very possible that the huge television event that is the Super Bowl will wind up on the mid-February Sunday NASCAR always has reserved for its version of the Super Bowl.
Clearly, this will not do. The idea of the Daytona 500 going up against the Super Bowl in a television/publicity throwdown is laughable. The guys in the shoulder pads win every time. NASCAR has gone more mainstream since its national surge in the early 1990s, but the NFL is much wider and deeper.
In this scenario, NASCAR probably would be forced to push its season-opener at least a week later on the calendar, and that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Chances are central Florida weather would be a touch better, and teams would have another week or so to tinker with their cars. One of the precious off weekends during the year probably would be lost, but, to coin a phrase, it is what it is.
When you’re playing in the same game with Big Daddy, you react to what he does. You play by his rules. You live in his shadow.
This is one area in which NASCAR does not control its own destiny.
