How to make NASCAR suck a little less

The time has come again where most of the locals here in the Tri Cities get really excited.  A huge event which brings in out-of-towners in droves to bombard every McDonalds and Waffle House in sight.  An event that will surely drain every convenience store of all Skoal and chewing tobacco.  An event that will fill up every local roach motel that people would normally not dare occupy.  An event that has plagued our local highways with old pickup trucks and El Caminos littered with the number 3 stickers and caused us not to get anywhere close to the destinations that we need to be in.  An event that can single handedly eliminate all beer within a 100 mile radius.  Yes, I am talking about Bristol Race Weekend.

We have been hit with this twice a year for as long as I can remember.  I am sure that our local business people who own motels, tobacco farms, and convenience stores get very excited about these two events because it is guaranteed money.  It’s the same excitement that overcomes a Porn Convention in Vegas when they hear that Charlie Sheen and Bill Clinton are coming to town.  However, I am one of the lone wolfs who despise the Southern National Pastime known as NASCAR.  In my eyes, it is one of the biggest non-sports that exists.  The sport is comprised of highly expensive replica cars plastered in corporate logos going in circles for 4 hours to make sure that everyone sees the advertisements so that when the fans leave they can be ensured to go out and buy all of the products that they don’t need in order to support their favorite driver.  I have tried in the past to “enjoy” this “sport” but when I watch it, I usually fall asleep or get so bored that I find the closest infomercial to get my attention.  It’s a circle.  All the cars are exactly the same.  It’s loud.  Most of the fans that surround me are drunk to the point of vomiting.  There is absolutely no entertainment in the entire event.  I have read though that in recent years the “sport” is losing a little of their former popularity.  People that were sucked into it are like me, they are realizing that they could see the same kind of action if the stood on a bridge overlooking an interstate:    All the cars are going fast, people are trying to pass each other, and zero real action is going on.  The ticket sales are not near what they used to be and it’s simply because people are becoming smarter.  NASCAR is not only the least exciting “sport” but it’s also the least entertaining form of racing.  Rally racing is fun because you are guaranteed a crash and it is done over a rough terrain that actually poses a challenge.  Motocross is fun because the possibility of someone hurling through the air and possibly crashing or landing can be equally exciting.  But NASCAR is basically a fast traffic jam.

Now of course I am never one to complain about something without offering a solution or at least some alternatives.  I agree that the race weekend is probably pretty good for our local economy so I don’t want to necessarily get rid of it all the way but I think we should make it more interesting and give people more excitement for their hard earned dollar.  So here are my suggestions to improve this prolonged advertising traffic jam.

1.       Every driver has to be legally drunk before they get behind the wheel.  I know this sounds irresponsible but hear me out.  If every one of the drivers sat down at the trackside bar for an hour and had a few Jack & Cokes before hitting the track, the traffic jam would turn into a full on fast paced demolition derby.  Wouldn’t you get a kick out of watching Dale Earnhardt Jr. driving the wrong direction on the track, weaving around all the oncoming cars?  We could watch Jimmie Johnson smash into Jeff Gordon and have both of them laughing hysterically before stumbling off the track back to the bar.  Plus think about the fights that would happen.  No one likes to fight quite like a bunch of high testosterone drunken rednecks (just look in the stands of any race for proof).  Kurt Busch would jump out and pummel the hell out of anyone who grazed his car, whole racing crews would be getting pissed and spray each other with gasoline, and fat old Tony Stewart would be dragging Mark Martin’s old shriveled butt of his car punching him and screaming “Just retire old man!!!”  I guarantee one drunken NASCAR race would be 1,000 times more exciting than all other NASCAR races in history combined.  (Also, something to think about, does this not seem reasonable anyway?  Every fan there gets drunk just so they can imagine a more exciting race.  If the drivers were already drunk, the fans wouldn’t even have to have booze to enjoy it.)  The winner would still be determined by who crossed the checkered line but it wouldn’t necessarily have to be in a car.  It could be whoever got out of their car and stumbled over it.

2.       Almost everyone who has watched racing will tell you, if they are being honest with themselves, that watching the crashes is the most exciting thing there.  So, why should NASCAR try to deny their fans what they want?  The format would be an “every man for himself” type of situation.  The goal would be to purposefully wreck every car that got in their way until they are the last car out there and only one car would cross the finish line.  No, this wouldn’t be a demolition derby; there would still be a great deal of strategy involved.  The goal wouldn’t be to wreck everyone and have your car still be able to start, but for the car to still be able to make it the duration of the race and finish it.  There probably wouldn’t be a lot of crashes at the first because the drivers would still be trying to avoid it so they could get further along in the race.  But after like 50 laps, Carl Edwards clips Juan Montoya from behind and sends him hurtling into the wall.  No major damage to Edward’s car and chances are Montoya’s car is destroyed.  At this point all hell would start to break lose.  Every driver out there would be vying to make the right hit on his opponent and still avoid damaging his own car to bad.  It would be constant high speed crashing.  There would be no caution flags either and all damaged-beyond-repair cars would be left on the track so that they never had to slow down and they could use the damaged cars as strategy pieces to run other cars into them.  The winner would be, of course, the last car that managed to escape with the least damage and still be able to cross the finish line.  If this was implemented I guarantee this would sky rocket to one of the most popular sports on earth just behind the NFL and European Soccer. 

3.       Similar to #2, but more of a special event each year:  A full scale, full speed, demolition derby.  All rednecks love to watch demolition derbies but the problem is the cars that are usually involved in those are old crappy jalopies that really no one cares if they are destroyed.  My NASCAR demolition derby would be much more high stakes.  NASCAR cars cost around $150 to $200,000 each with around $20 million invested in them each year.  Something about watching high priced things being destroyed is very appealing to people, as long as it is not their own expensive things being destroyed.  Like I said this could be the big special event each year for the sport and it could be held in Bristol in that giant field area in the middle.  All the cars could be lined around the edge of the field all facing inward and when Larry the Cable Guy yells “Git er’ Done!!” into the microphone, the cars would drive full speed into the middle causing a cataclysmic crash that would rock the stadium.  It would be full on carnage and sure a couple of the drivers might not exactly live through it, but the roar of the crowd would be worth it.  People would come from all around the world to watch this.  Bristol would become the Mecca for rednecks, race aficionados, and a**holes you enjoy watching destruction.

The only way that I will ever watch racing will be if any of these changes are put into place.  And since none of this will ever happen because no one ever listens to my impeccable logic, I will continue as I do each year.  I will happily know that I am not watching NASCAR and that I do not give a damn.  Anytime I feel like watching fast cars while I’m drunk it’s always cheaper to pull a lawn chair onto the side of the interstate with a cooler full of beer.