Talladega! At just the right moment....because NASCAR needs a shot in the arm

  Mike Wallace (01) is about to go for a big Talladega ride (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

    Talladega rarely if ever disappoints, no matter what.
    Even Friday's tornadoes and rain couldn't dampen anticipation about Sunday's Talladega 500 -- Aarons 499.
   It's a good thing Texas' Eddie Gossage didn't put his 500 up against the Masters last Sunday afternoon, because the golf classic – with maybe 10 men having a shot at the win in the closing laps – had everything Texas didn't, in terms of drama.
   Matt Kenseth's Texas rout, two weeks after Kevin Harvick's California romp…and by the way, how long was that Martinsville race? Probably well past most attention spans.
   So now Talladega, and certainly NASCAR will regain momentum Sunday.
   Even Fox, which has done a less than spectacular job this season with its coverage – camera work, direction, and announcing, which has bordered on the intolerable – can't screw up Talladega. Knock on wood.
   What in the world is going on inside Fox headquarters? Someone needs to have a sit-down and rethink camera angles – rethink its NASCAR production operations from a number of angles.
    Is it true that Fox carried Mark Martin's crash live from the in-car cam? Atrocious.
    Not to mention why was there apparently no soft wall where Martin hit....
   Is Fox' coverage falling apart? It's certainly been flat. No good perspective, no big-picture understanding of the race as a whole.
   Who is the Fox boss here, now that David Hill is busy doing some National Geographic thing for the network?
   Certainly TV ratings should be hot for Talladega.
   After a hot start, NASCAR's TV ratings have hit what looks like a lull. While this year's early season schedule shuffle (Phoenix for California, California moved to late March...) may make some comparisons difficult, this is the picture, going into Sunday's 500:
   -- Daytona (8.2), Phoenix (5.9) and Las Vegas (5.9) were all up from 2010.
   -- However, following a week off (where NASCAR should have been running Atlanta), things started to dip. Bristol (which may need some rethinking by crews and drivers and NASCAR, to make things more exciting at what was once the toughest ticket in the sport) pulled a 4.3, down from last year's 5.3.
   -- California pulled a 4.6, up a bit from last year's event in that same time slot, but down  from last year's second-race-of-the-season 5.0.  (And NASCAR may be second-guessing its decision to move the Los Angeles event from its right-after-Daytona slot, where the past three years California pulled solid 6-plus ratings.)
   -- Martinsville pulled a  so-so 4.4. (Last year's race was rain-delayed till Monday.)
   -- Then Texas pulled a surprising weak 3.7. (Last year's race was rain-delayed until Monday; two years ago the event pulled a 4.2.)
   The Texas 500 is troublesome in several respects.
   First, did the move to Saturday night really work for NASCAR? Yes, considering the Masters' finish, it's a probably a good thing Gossage and Bruton Smith didn't try to go head to head on Sunday.
   But remember those once-great Texas TV numbers? Those 6-plus ratings? Texas used to be an early-season benchmark for the sport.
   Too many boring Texas races? Bad TV? What's the problem? What's the solution?
   When NASCAR can't go head-to-head with golf, there's something that needs fixin'.