Commentary by: Rob Staley
Danville, VA(June 2, 2011) — The surprise resignation of embattled Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel on Memorial Day may have been the worst thing that could have happened to auto racing in this country.
Translation… after two stellar events on Sunday by the Indy Racing League and NASCAR ( the Indy 500 and The Coke 600, respectively) most of the electronic media talk shows seemed poised to talk excessively about the thrilling edge of the seat endings in both races. Instead the Tressel announcement dominated the airwaves and we got our usual small dose of the racing news.
Don’t kid yourselves into thinking this doesn’t affect your local track. The amount of coverage that would have come with a day of network television and radio talk shows devoted mainly to racing would have put motorsports in the limelight again for probably the first time in a positive light since the epic 1979 Daytona 500. After the gas crisis of the mid-seventies seriously hampered all racing , that Daytona race ( the first 500 mile race shown start to finish on live television ) galvanized the American public and made racing a topic at the workplace and the family meal. Short tracks drew tremendous benefits from the publicity that ensued and attendance at local tracks grew because people found they could see racing at their local track.
Just as “out of sight, out of mind” can affect any form of entertainment in a negative way, the unusual publicity that the 2011 Indy 500 and Coke 600 woud have provided could have taken the general sport to a new level. Unfortunately all the attention was diverted to a man who gained it by deceit. And us poor race fans are only left to wonder what could have been.
