Champion Rex White has seen a lot of changes in NASCAR over the years....and now what's next?

 So Fox' sports guru David Hill is worried about NASCAR losing that 18-34 male demographic? Well, Charlotte Motor Speedway's Miss Oktoberfast, London Hunter, is one promotion that might address that concern. (Photo: Harold Hinson)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   ATLANTA
   Rex White, here this weekend as part of Atlanta Motor Speedway's 50th anniversary celebration, says NASCAR racing has changed a lot in the years since he won the 1960 national championship...back when track officials had to light bonfires to keep away the wild hogs, and when fans had to deal with a very muddy infield..
   "About the only things that haven't changed are the green flag and the checkered flag," the legendary stock car driver from Taylorsville, N.C.. says.
   The biggest change he's seen?
   Easy: The money. For that 1960 NASCAR championship, White, who fought polio as a youngster and grew up to be one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers, got a check for $13,000.
    Back then the sport didn't sweat demographics or TV ratings or 'image.' It was more about just keeping tires on the race car and dodging potholes....

   Fast-forward:
   Just what is NASCAR's image, in the eyes of the average American today?
   The sport itself is providing great racing, personable and accessible stars, and plenty of good tickets are still available for the rest of the season's events.
   But obviously NASCAR executives are concerned about something.
   Now, after spending a week pondering the pending NASCAR marketing-and-PR shakeup, with a new 'communications' boss to come on line eventually, and that whole 'image' department expected to expand significantly, well, things aren't much clearer than they were the day NASCAR sent out that strange PR announcement about the changes coming.
  
  

 Legendary racer Rex White got $13,000 for winning the 1960 NASCAR championship. With drivers today making millions of dollars a year, White says he might be willing to suit up again (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR) 
  
  

   Does NASCAR want an image makeover?
   Just what do NASCAR execs want?
   At least NASCAR finally realizes there is a problem, or problems....though it's not certain it has yet defined them, much less any possible solutions.

   Bottom line here, at the moment this appears a move aimed squarely at better positioning the sport for the next round of TV contract negotiations, and at helping team owners to keep sponsors happy and attract new sponsors.
   The current TV contract runs through the end of 2014, and that might seem a long way off. But the current contract, which didn't kick in until 2007, was signed in December 2005 ($4.8 Billion over eight years; Fox-Speed, ABC-ESPN, and Turner).
   And some of the current big-league sponsors, like DuPont, Budweiser, and ExxonMobil, are apparently paring down their NASCAR sports budgets. And Wal-Mart has just rejected NASCAR.
   TV ratings have been going down the last two years, for whatever reason. (And that is a different issue than race track crowds.)
   Can't blame the economy for weak TV numbers. (Fox' David Hill says he's been particularly concerned by a 30 percent drop in NASCAR's 18-34 male demographic.)
   And can't ignore the fact that the National Football League has been hitting some really great TV ratings.
   So what's really going on here?
  
  

   Bruton Smith, who runs Speedway Motorsports' eight tracks, says he's not sure just what NASCAR executives are looking for in this search: "What did they do? Buy somebody a Blackberry?" Smith said with a laugh. "I'm not sure what they're looking for...but I think I'm qualified, and I'd highly recommend myself.
   "Actually Don Hawk (the well-known business executive for Smith) could do it. Plus he's already got a Blackberry. In fact he's got two. And as soon as he goes through our next class, at the College of Knowledge, he's going to get a third."
   Marcus Smith, who runs Charlotte Motor Speedway for his father, says, on a more serious note, that NASCAR's goal is simple: "We've gotten more than our share of negative press....which may be the normal tendency of any news coverage today. But as a sport we need to do a better job of making sure the positive stories are there and relevant.
    "Our bad days for attendance, of only 100,000 for a race, is still five or six times what an average basketball or baseball game might be.
   "We have tremendous events, even if they aren't all sellouts. And we're still far and away the highest-attended sporting event on a regular basis.
   "And our TV ratings are still a very respectable second-place in the sports world. Multiples of what basketball and baseball ratings are.
  "We have a lot of great, positive things going for us that sometimes get lost."

   Indeed, the product out on NASCAR's tracks this season has generally been excellent, aside from a few dog races.
   Double-file restarts....multiple green-white-checkered finishes.....overtime work by Goodyear in testing and tweaking tires.....
   The game itself is quite good.
   And the sport is in some really good markets around the U.S (though it's clear, from just a walk around some of these towns, that NASCAR's 'penetration' of some of these markets is much too limited).
   And NASCAR has been doing its typical bang-up job of marketing the NASCAR brand-name across the country, in everything from soap operas to movies. If there is anyone in America who hasn't heard the name 'NASCAR' by now, he's probably six feet under.

   Yet why the slump?
   And will simply pumping out more positive-oriented PR change the dynamic?
   Yes, it's been years since Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a factor on any given Sunday....
   Yes, Jimmie Johnson has four straight championships...
   Yes, current tour leader Kevin Harvick has become too much plain vanilla....
   But most of NASCAR's stars are making things happen, if not necessarily winning. Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Juan Pablo Montoya. The sport is not hurting for brand-name players.

   Some questions:
   What kind of 'communications' boss is NASCAR looking for: Someone who knows racing, or someone who doesn't know racing? Will PR people be reporting to a marketing boss, or will marketing and PR remain somewhat independent? (If that situation isn't put together just right, there could be a significant credibility issue.)
   Is the season simply too darned long? February through Thanksgiving?
  
  

   Has the sport oversaturated the market place, with too many races, too many boring TV shows?
   Is America bored with the same old NASCAR announcers? 
   Do we blame TV itself – is the production that bad, the commercials too frequent, the announcers too over-the-top? Is there too much NASCAR on TV, too many pre-race shows and weekly shows? Are there just too many darned TV faces covering NASCAR? Who are all these people anyway, and just what credentials do they have for even being on the air?
   Do we blame newspapers, the print media, for dying on us....for killing the traditional NASCAR beat...for cutting NASCAR coverage, in the goal of saving a couple of bucks?
   Do we blame the car-of-tomorrow, which was introduced just about the time TV ratings started falling?
   Do we blame the testing ban, which wound up pushing top teams into buying expensive, and exclusive, computer simulation programs?
   Do we blame the escalating costs of just the race car itself?
   Do we blame the weak state of the Cup tour's two major support operations, the Truck series and the Nationwide series?
   Do we blame the demise of NASCAR's traditional independents? The sport is now dominated by a handful of very powerful team owners, with multi-car teams, which do indeed offer economics of scale but also suck up all the sponsorships?
   Robby Gordon can barely make it from race to race.
   The Woods have been forced to cut back to a partial schedule.
   James Finch is calling it quits.
  
  

  Marcus Smith: You've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative.....(Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

  
  

   Maybe this sport isn't attacking the markets it's in as well as it should be.
   And NASCAR's leaving LA and Atlanta certainly doesn't send a great message to potential sponsors.
   Chicago all but ignores the track out in Joliet.
   Does Miami really 'get it' about the track and season finale down in Homestead?
   What is NASCAR really trying to do with Montreal?
   Los Angeles and California Speedway: Well, forget the reputation that part of Southern California has had (because the Ontario area, at least up till the start of the current recession, has been a major economic success story, for anyone who has followed that area over the past 15 years or so). Maybe building a major speedway like that in one of the trucking capitals of the world might not have been as good as putting that track in, say, northern San Diego. But it's not the location that is the problem there.
   The biggest problem with California's Auto Club Speedway is that the racing at that track is typically very boring.  That track has become too well known, notorious even, for boring races – because the speeds are too high (208 mph into the corners) and the banking (14 degrees) is way too flat. That NASCAR executives have continued to ignore the quality of the product at that track is a shame.
   However, instead of trying to fix the real problem, NASCAR simply pulled a Cup weekend and shipped it to Kansas City.
   So Kansas City, population two million, will have two NASCAR Cup weekends in 2011, while Los Angeles, population 25 million, will have only one?
   What kind of cockeyed marketing is that?
   Atlanta? Well, we went up Lenox Square Mall in the heart of town the other day (and that has long  been this town's definitive economic landmark), and there in the middle of all those upscale Buckhead people and stores was a race car – but not a NASCAR stocker, rather a sports car promoting next month's race at Road Atlanta, just north of the city.
   Huh?
   On top of that, local car dealers had bought plenty of space in the Lenox Square Mall for Fiestas and other new street cars they're trying to sell, and there were big billboards inside the mall promoting that. So why not a NASCAR stocker side-by-side? What's the deal there? Another missed marketing opportunity?
    Another surprising new angle here: competition from high school football on Friday nights. On network TV in this area. Competition for TV viewers....with sometimes three high school games a night (one live, two tape-delayed). And Atlanta TV isn't doing that without profit in mind, or in the pocket.
  
  

   NASCAR executives over the past few years have aggravated and turned off many of the sport's long-time hardcore fans. And they have appeared to make some moves with almost disdain for those fans.
   Some of those new fans NASCAR has been trying to attract seem now to be fading away.
   Maybe it's time for a kinder, gentler NASCAR 'face.'
   Like, why does NASCAR continue to limit video media access inside tracks? Why does NASCAR have 'YouTube police?' If a fan wants to Flip-camera his trip to the track, and post it on YouTube, seems like that's a plus for the sport. Why the harassment -- Isn't that counter-productive?
   Of course there is also the question why does NASCAR have a 'Twitter police force'? Who in the world down in Daytona decided it was a great idea to deal out secret fines to NASCAR drivers Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin for speaking their mind? Whoever came up with that decision is probably a big part of the problem here.
   Yes -- basically part of the problem NASCAR has appears to be an image problem.
   Not just the greed factor (like in the issue of sponsorship 'exclusivity,' which locks out potential sponsors), and the expensive hotel rooms on race weekends (NASCAR promoters could probably solve some big problems by doing what Grant Lynch did when opening Kansas Speedway – by getting local hotels to agree not to raise the price of $69 rooms to $199 on race weekends.)
   Not just in continuing to jam this championship chase down fans' throats, in the face of complaints.
   How to deal with that?
   Much of the traditional NASCAR media has also faded away, drop-kicked to the curb, supposedly for economic reasons, basically leaving NASCAR's TV partners to tell the stories...and to ignore the stories NASCAR doesn't want pushed. Has NASCAR TV – other than David Hill's print-media complaints – discussed the ratings problems, the less than thrilling crowds? (Indianapolis' Brickyard 400 was a shocker, though Bristol was nice and nearly full.)
   Maybe the people running the sport – basically the France family and Bruton Smith -- have been too much involved in too much business-versus-business, ISC-versus-SMI, battling, and not paying enough attention to things really needed to improve the sport itself.

  Chicagoland Speedway: Are NASCAR's promoters attacking the sport's key markets as forcefully as they could? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   Soooooo....are NASCAR's bosses really serious about making meaningful changes, or just looking to find new messengers to sing the same old songs, just louder?
   Is NASCAR looking for people with fresh, new ideas, or just more bodies to throw into the fray?
   And is NASCAR willing to think outside the box?
   For example, how about changing the championship chase lineup of tracks?
   For example, isn't it time to change California Speedway and give the LA market some high-octane NASCAR action?
   For example, isn't it time to put more emphasis on winning, and on leading laps?

   Part of this whole debate is to first size up the problems, then consider solutions.
   Perhaps it's all really easy:
   Maybe NASCAR just needs to find a warm-and-fuzzy image maker.....a Chief Cheerleader of sorts...someone to inspire confidence and more spirit of the fun of it all.
   Is this all just about just putting more positive spins on things, or are there basic problems that should be addressed?

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  Goodyear engineers have stepped to the plate the last two seasons with wide open testing (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)