vehicles. So if you own one of the above mentioned vehicles, contact the manufacturer or local dealerships.
The supposed standard start times aren’t that standardized. 1 pm for East Coast races and 3 pm for West coast races may be standardized to some, but if they had a 1 pm Eastern Time start across the board for the day races, they’d stand a better chance of getting some fans back. Unfortunately, that won’t happen. During the fall and winter, football is going on and by 3 pm Eastern, most folks in the East are busy watching football or doing things with their families. Another thing they would have to do to get fans back is improve the coverage by 2 of the networks. But as we’ve seen with David Hills’ attitude regarding fans, that won’t happen with Focks. In order to get the coverage back to being about racing and not marketing, that means a major renovation to the broadcast and the Booth Buffoons from both networks. Not to mention His Royal Highness keeping his yap shut and his sticky fingers out of how the races will be covered. Maybe if he just let the networks and media cover the races the way they’re supposed to instead of dictating the coverage, he could get a few fans back. Of course, that means the Kool Aid drinkers and ones who are kissing the Royal Posterior might be out of a job leaving it to folks like Monte Dutton and Ed Hinton to cover the written reporting of the races and getting folks like Eli Gold and Buddy Baker back in the announcing booth to give fans some real commentary that isn‘t totally biased or commercialized.
Alienating the core fans and replacing them with the short attention span crowd and the fad fans has proven to be a disaster. About the only way to get the core fans back is to eliminate all of the changes made by His Majesty and replacing him with somebody who actually knows about racing and has real credibility. But will the Royal Family actually be willing to let go of the reigns of leadership? Doubtful, even though they’re suffering staggering financial losses which would normally get their attention. The economy can only be blamed for so much. The rest of the problems are self-induced.
While lowering the ticket prices should in theory bring fans back to the grandstands, His Imperial Incontinence has PO’ed so many fans they won’t be coming back unless things go back to what they were before he ass-ended the throne. Eliminating the Ms Terry DeBris cautions and manipulating the races needs to end before some fans will return. The rather blatant favoritism and WWE style of racing that pervades NA$CAR needs to be eliminated to get some fans back. Getting rid of the phony play-off system and all of it’s artificiality might get a few folks back. But that would mean His Infernal Incompetence would have to admit he was wrong and as we know the Royal Ego won’t allow for that. The logic portion of what little there is inside that melon on his shoulders is burned out from too many “sodas” and the ego is immensely swollen.
While making the start times more uniform is a step in the right direction, it’s not going to cure what’s wrong with the sport. This is just another effort, like the double file restart, to distract fans from what’s really wrong with what was once a great sport. Has the double file restart improved the sport or the handling of the Car of Tedium? Not really. Did the double file restart end the favoritism in the garage? Nope, not one bit. Did the double file restart improve the quality of the broadcasts? Not even close. Will the new start times improve the handling of Crusty’s Old Toilet? Nope. Will it improve the quality of the broadcasts? No way. Is the standardized start times going to end the manipulation of the races? Definitely not. Is it going to end the favoritism in the garage? Not a snowball’s chance of that happening. Will a standardize start time cause the rules to be equally enforced across the board for every driver and race team? Does a chicken have lips? It’s just another effort by the non-competent nincompoops in the Ivory Towers to keep fans distracted from what’s really ailing the WWE on Wheels. Poor leadership.
Now, onto some other things. Carole brought up a good question about the Shootout. Since Petty is switching to Fords, that means there will be fewer Dodges on the track and probably not enough of them to fill the allocated slots. So what’s going to happen with the empty allocations? Well, it could mean the Shootout will be run with a short field. But with as much hype as the Beach Boy Bubbas put into the Shootout, you know they won’t do that. But they could dictate that some of the Start and Parks (S&P) switch to Dodge just for the Shootout. Not likely, but it’s possible. His Royal Highness could also split up the empty slots between the other manufacturers. That’s more likely than the S&P scenario, but I have my doubts about it. Since His High-anus has shown a preference towards the Hendrick boys, it’s more likely that he’d give them the extra slots to ensure Jr. is in the field for the Shootout although Jr. would get in on the “fan vote” if he’s not eligible otherwise. Of course, since the Imperial Inebriate defies logic and what‘s actually best for the sport (his resignation), he’ll come up with some half-baked idea or some bizarre mathematical formula which nobody can figure out which will make no sense to fill the slots allocated to Dodge and make sure Jr. is in the Shootout.
One thing the late Don Hamm and myself were doing was checking out our gas mileage because of the ethanol. Both Don and myself found that our gas mileage suffered. On average, we were losing 3-5 mpg because of the ethanol. I’ve been carrying on the “research” and have found that by switching to the 89 octane, my gas mileage has gone back to where it was before. Granted, it’s costing me more money, but if I’m able to get 600 miles out of a tank of gas in my car versus 500-540 miles, it means one less stop on a road trip if I‘m visiting my dad. So it’s a bit of a trade off. More money for more mileage and convenience.
22 millions fans tuned in for the Packers-Vikings game, which set a new record for cable viewers watching a particular regular season game. Over 18 million watched the Chargers-Steelers game. NA$CAR came in with about 5 million for Kansas. That’s a far cry from the supposed 75 million fans His Royal Highness keeps bragging about. The Daytona 500 only had 16 million viewers, which is down from the highest ever ratings 18.7 million, not quite the 38 million HRH bragged about. Even the WWE Raw show beat the Kansas ratings for NA$CAR and they’re the closest thing to NA$CAR right now as far as storylines, audience age, and things being manipulated behind the scenes.
When a live race gets beat by re-runs of Sponge Bob Square Pants, like what happened several years ago, that should’ve been a warning sign right then and there. But what can I say? His Imperial (Im)Potent-ate knows what’s best for the sport. He said so didn’t he?
Bad news for Motorsports Authentics. Not paying out royalty fees and possible bankruptcy on the horizon? That’s not good. Bruton might have to skip the daily Turtle Wax shine on his “dome” and His Royal Intoxicant might have to drink more “house brand ‘sodas‘ ”. Add this to the staggering losses on ticket and concession sales and things are not looking good financially this year. I wonder if any teams or drivers will sue because they’re not getting their royalty checks? That could make NA$CAR’s legal problems even worse. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
An award for the regular season winner makes sense. Hopefully it will also include a nice hefty check to go with it. What would make more sense would be dumping this sham of a play-off system. Go back to making the full season count. Give
the race winner more points, like 100 pts per
race win, during the year. Of course, we’d have
folks whining again when we had a season that
was a blow out, like when Kenseth won the
championship. But then we could also have a
nail biter like when Alan Kulwicki won the
season too. Or maybe adopt the full play-off
system that the Hooters Pro-Cup Series uses.
It makes a lot more sense than what we’ve got
in NA$CAR right now. The Chase for the
Chumps has proven that it can’t compete
against the NFL, so go back to something that
works Your Infernal Rectaltude.
Thanks to a minor navigation error, an Italian
explorer got lost when he was trying to find his way to India and instead he found an unknown land. This would eventually lead to the discovery of even more unknown lands and the eventual establishing of the United States of America. So this week when you’re checking out your GPS, give thanks that Christopher Columbus didn’t have one or we wouldn’t be here to enjoy his “navigation error”.
Motherhood, Apple Pie, and John Wayne
Mad Mikie, Curmudgeon at Large
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