NASCAR could learn a lot from...

I haven't had many positive things to say about NASCAR in recent years.  Simply put, the dynamic of the sport has changed and not for the better.  I was an avid fan in the mid-1990's and have attended several races, the highlight of those experiences being the 2000 edition of The Winston at Lowe's Motor Speedway (an event which has since been re-named The All-Star as a result of NASCAR's primary series having changed sponsors) where Dale Earnhardt, Jr. became the first rookie to ever win the event. (Indeed, the image of Dale Jr. celebrating the win with his father is particularly poignant seeing as how Dale Sr. lost his life as the result of a tragic incident the following year at the Daytona 500.) From their decision to develop and insist on the usage of the "Car of Tomorrow" (only to abandon it altogether) to their persistent rule changes which haven't so much evened the playing field (Er, track?) as they have taken away the ingenuity and cleverness once displayed by crew chiefs, the decisions that the powers-that-be within NASCAR have wound up making me generally disinterested in the sport.

And by "generally disinterested", I mean if I actually bother to tune in to a race there's about a 97.4% chance that I'm either not going to hang around until the end or, better yet, that having watched cars going in circles for a certain length of time will have put me into a near comatose state.

Not helping this at all is the fact that NASCAR has bred a modern generation of drivers who have all the personality of vanilla iced cream.  I blame Jeff Gordon for this, personally, as his emergence into the sport seemed to signal the dawn of the current era of drivers.  His successes as a driver made him desirable to sponsors but what set him apart was that he was seen as someone who could be a clean cut, baby-faced representative for companies who pay big money to have their logos and products featured on the cars.  Yet another example of how the almighty dollar is more important to professional sports than the quality of said sport.

When I started watching NASCAR (cue images of me as an old man talking down to some young whipper-snapper), we had drivers like Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace and many others who were as vibrant off the track as they were on it.  Nowadays, drivers seem to be culled from a mold as they all have essentially the same height, same build, same $50 haircut, same $500 sunglasses, and even the same arm-piece girlfriend.  I'll admit that there are a few exceptions to this; drivers such as Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart can always be counted on to make things more interesting.  Be that as it may, the gestapo-esque overlords who run NASCAR always find a way to squelch their vivaciousness by way of penalties ranging from fines up to and including suspensions for doing anything they don't much approve of.  And heaven forbid they even think of expressing themselves with their fists in a bit of post-race activity - calm down boys, that's a definite no-no!

What spurred on this blog is something I noticed during driver introductions at the 2011 All-Star Race.  Watch the video below - pay close attention to the drivers as they make their way onto the stage and compare their mannerisms to that of their crews.

See what I mean?  For crying out loud, these guys look like they took a double-dose of Valium with a shot of vodka before they walked through the curtain!  These drivers are supposed to be the best of the best, the cream of the crop, too sweet to be sour and too cold to hold (RIP, "Macho Man" Randy Savage) but instead they look like they need someone to set their shoes on fire just to get them moving.  This in spite of the fact that they're walking across a stage that's loaded with projection screens, lights, fog, and enough fireworks to be seen from outer space - not to mention the notion that there are about 120,000 people in attendance and God only knows how many watching on television. (Another point worth bringing up is that this race was broadcast on a Saturday night, in prime time - on some level, NASCAR has to understand that they're competing for viewership and that people at home want to be entertained, not lulled to sleep.) You'd think all this would be enough to inspire them to do something, ANYTHING, to try and get the crowd into the event (seeing as how they've all been sitting in the stands for about 6 hours by this point in the evening; trust me when I say that races are an all-day event) but no, not them!  They're there on business and cannot be bothered with such silly frivolities.

It could be that they're simply timid individuals, which I can understand.  Not everyone has a talent for showmanship or the ability to get in front of a crowd without having a deer-in-headlights reaction.  For this reason, I'm making an official recommendation to NASCAR (because they're more likely to listen to my official recommendations instead of my casual ones - yeah, that's it) that they immediately institute a training program for all drivers with a curriculum based around a man who is individually responsible for some of the most energetic professional wrestling entrances of all time!

Yes, I'm suggesting that NASCAR drivers could learn a lot from the Ultimate Warrior - a guy who goes to work wearing underwear and enough tassels to make the members of a hair-metal band jealous with his face painted up as if he were some kind of Aboriginal witch doctor.  The point being that charisma means something when you're competing for people's expendable income that they choose to spend on entertainment.  Absurd as though it may sound, it wouldn't hurt if NASCAR had their own Ultimate Warrior.  The closest approximation to this that they have right now is Carl Edwards, driver of the #99 Ford Fusion who does a back-flip off the side of his car when he wins a race.  I'm not above suggesting that he begin doing the back-flip whilst on fire at this point because it's going to take a lot to get fans back interested in racing the way they were less than a decade ago.