My NASCAR Tummy Ache

I'm falling out of love with NASCAR.

Not with stock car racing, mind you. Just with NASCAR. Stock car racing, fear not, I still love you, in more ways than I can count. Those three words, 'stock car racing', still excite me. But NASCAR, you've given me a tummy ache.

I can pinpoint the start of my love affair with this sport to two instances. The first is the still-unbelievable sight of Ricky Rudd making an early case for roof flaps in the Busch Clash in 1984. I had no idea who Ricky Rudd was. I had no idea where Daytona was. I did know that my weekend television would never be the same. As it was explained to me, this, or at least what the drivers had been doing up until the moment Rudd's Ford tried out for the gymnastics team, was stock car racing.

The other moment is seeing my uncle return home from the local quarter mile track one Sunday afternoon with his tales of that day's racing, wiping the dirt and rubber from his face. My uncle was never a racer. He just liked to sit close. His filth and my parent's insistence that the racetrack was "too rough" were enough for my 8 year old brain to conclude that this stock car racing thing was probably the greatest thing ever. I wasn't far off.

But the relationship today is not what it was. Admittedly I'm hardly floating a novel idea here. The griping and complaining, legitimate or otherwise, with all things NASCAR has reached a din of late only just drown out by the beloved roar of the engines.

North Americans are a gluttonous lot. I should know. I'm one. My 'treat' each week is to devour a large pizza while watching the Cup race. Our appetites extend beyond simply food however. Someone, somewhere, after witnessing Jeff Gordon descend from the racing heavens in the early 90's, saw a delicious, deep-fried racing product before them and, some distance away, an immense pile of salivating race fans. In between was a weedy, narrow little foot path. This had to change.

And change it did. That footpath is no more. The space between has been removed and has been replaced with moving sidewalks, conveying race fans around the clock to the biggest racing-related smorgasbord that has ever been. The hungry mob was then free to indulge itself. And indulge we did.

There was a time in the 50's and 60's when the 'Cup' season routinely encompassed 700-plus events. The '68 season is actually just coming to an end. Seriously, there were a lot of races in a season. But how many of those races were televised? I'd be very surprised to learn that any of them were. Perhaps the last few laps of the Daytona 500 were televised here and there. Those fantastic Bud Lindemann "Car and Track" race recap programs are just awesome to watch now (stock-appearing 'stock' cars...how novel) and they give you an indication of how big league stock car racing was meted out sparingly in the past. For those not lucky enough to attend a race it must have been a thrill to have seen that much. In light of today's safe-wall to safe-wall coverage only reading about a race doesn't sound like much fun. But I'm sure fans pored over whatever they could get their hands on "back in the day".

Then along came network and cable television and the sport got some much needed and deserved attention. Even so, I remember in the 80's and even early 90's that it wasn't unusual for me to see a half dozen races or fewer on television.

And now today we have a fully-televised 36 race schedule, plus the whatever-they-are-calling-it-now pre-season race at Daytona and the all-star race, topped with interminable pre-race and pre-pre-race shows, dozens of legitimate Cup-devoted webpages and an animated rodent.

Burp.

It's all too much. We've long since hit the saturation point. There have been and will continue to be some great races at the Cup level. But also in the mix are a few mediocre races and some down right awful races. 500 miles at California twice a year, business interests aside, are not necessary. Unfortunately, the toothpaste is out of the tube.

Aside from naive suggestions of paring down the schedule by a half dozen or so races or shortening most Cup events to 300 to 400 miles, I don't know how to restore the level of excitement to NASCAR Cup racing that I remember from the past. The arguments put forth from the television talking heads of "growing the sport" ring as hollow now as they did when they first appeared in the mid 90's. What's growing when you start getting away from what made the sport the delicious deep-fried product you wanted everyone to try in the first place? We've been back and forth to the great All-You-Can-Eat buffet that is NASCAR Cup racing too many times and now we've gone and eaten ourselves sick.