I used to be a huge NASCAR fan years ago, but Dale passed away and Smoke retired, and then they added those stupid stages and kinda ruined the sport. I guess MJ and Hamlin are free to waste their money in whatever manner they choose, but this is such a PC stunt. Wallace stinks, but he's the right ethnicity. Maybe they can lure Danica out of retirement and completely ruin that team.
I can't remember the last time I watched any part of a NASCAR race, let alone an entire race.
I was a Jeff Gordon fan and watched religiously from '01 through '04 and even succeeded in getting a few of my college buddies interested in the sport. All I told them was to sit down, watch a little bit, and pick a driver either based on their number or their sponsor. That's all it took. They learned the finer points of the sport as they went.
The demise began when Bill France Jr. turned over the reigns to his son Brian. The Chase for the Championship sucked, and Brian started taking more races out of the SE and put more of them on crappy 1.5 mile ovals without creating any reason for fans to care that the race was being held at that particular track. He couldn't keep at least 1 race date for a place like Rockingham? Also, it felt like every time Dale Jr. would be on the verge of falling off the lead lap, a caution flag would be thrown for debris on the track. Additionally, the networks would put their bias on complete display and be sure to cut in with the crowd mic if and when "Junior" would take the lead in a race. The commentators liked to make excuses for him and his inability to contend for a series championship.
Toward the end of my watching tenure, owners became more concerned with finding "the next big thing" who looks and sounds good in front of the camera instead of putting someone behind the wheel who could actually drive without causing a wreck every race, and the amount of cautions felt like it increased significantly. The races had no flow to them and became too long and unwatchable. The drivers all seemed like they lacked individual character and were all giving the same canned responses during their pre and postrace interviews. That said, I don't fault the owners entirely in the sense that they were simply adapting to the climate of the auto racing business: It had reached a point where a good-looking articulate driver was going to draw far more sponsorship money than a great driver who's hard on the eyes and cringeworthy on the mic was ever going to win on the track. The money was rolling in, but the product on the racetrack suffered. You can get away with that for a little bit, but at the end of the day, a quality product is needed over the long haul.
Pro wrestling has suffered a similar fate: grew too much too fast and abandoned its core fans, passed up good in-ring performers for looks, and now management controls the talent to the point that everyone looks and sounds the same, and the in-ring product is unwatchable.
