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June 7, 2003 If you remember my last article I was talking about how, despite the fact that the particular idiom is not scripture as is commonly thought, that money IS the root of all evil. That is if you have something that you really enjoy all you have to do is get large amounts of money involved and it will surely be ruined and have all style, all class and all enjoyment, save for those making the money, be sucked from it as completely as removing the air from a balloon. Last week there was just too much griping to put into one article so I decided to write a continuance this week and mention probably the best example of how money rots all that is pure and good. I’m talking about professional sports. Now before everybody starts rolling their eyes at the mention of yet other rant about big money in sports let me promise that I’ll mention just three instances where this is evident and then I take off on my own tangent. 1. Lebron James is eighteen years old, has already signed a $40 million dollar contract with Nike and stands to make a lot more money starting in a month or two. He hasn’t even stepped on a pro court yet. Does anybody see this as a little bit ridiculous? You know I hope he does well but what if he flops? It’s happened before. I can’t really mention anybody in basketball, I don’t really follow the NBA that much, but as for you football fans out there I’ve got three names for you, three of many: Heath Shuler, Ryan Leaf and Rashan Salaam. 2. I’m a Redskin fan and a couple of years ago I watched “Danny Boy” Snyder spent $100 million dollars on players, most of whom were ready to collect social security, and still they couldn’t find their behind with both their hands. 3. The commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference is chomping at the bit to get several universities from the Big East Conference to come into the A.C.C. Now I was against F.S.U. coming into the conference. I thought that teams such as East Carolina, South Carolina, or even Appalachian State would have been more even talent wise, but what do I know? Okay I’ll give you F.S.U., but the A.C.C. is fine the way it is, think of what it’ll do to the Big East. I just can’t get over the idea of schools from Pittsburg and Boston playing on Tobacco Road. It’s sort of like the Celtics wearing orange, the Yankees playing home games in Tuscaloosa, or the Expos playing in Puerto Rico…oh wait a minute! Now I want to get to something that probably isn’t mentioned as much in the established media. That would be NASCAR and the effect of mucho mullah on this country’s fastest growing sport. Now I’m not underestimating the amount of money that it takes to put together a NASCAR/Winston Cup event much less a season and that the best way to make that money, in addition to ticket sales, merchandise etc., is advertising and endorsements. The cars as well as the driver’s uniforms have long been turned into the billboards and the events themselves are named after some company or other (ex. The Pop Secret 400.) The name of the sport’s highest level of competition is the Winston Cup which is nothing more than a commercial for Winston Cigarettes, much to the chagrin of anti-smoking nuts. After that it gets a little ridiculous. The driver’s speech themselves are dictated by the sponsors. You never hear a driver say simply: “The car was running real good today.” It’s always: “The Budweiser Chevrolet is running real good.” Or “I blew out one of my Goodyear tires and put my Viagra Ford into the Diet Pepsi inside wall.” That’s another thing. A great driver like Mark Martin driving a car endorsing a male impotency drug is horrible. I’m sure that his merchandise sales are down and the jokes are awful. These endorsement deals dictate what the driver’s say, what hat they put on in winner’s circle and what they drink to quench their thirst after driving four or five-hundred miles. I hope we’ll never see the Castor Oil 500. It’s all a big change since the early days of a bunch bootleggers getting together in a pasture or field and betting to see who had the fastest car. This gets me to two very distressing things occurring in NASCAR today that I’m sure goes back to money. The first is the fact that Bill Davis, owner of my favorite driver, Ward Burton’s car as well as that of Kenny Wallace, is in danger of being sued by Dodge for supposedly sharing information about the construction and development of Dodge race engines to Toyota who at present want to field a team in Winston Cup, and I’m sorry a foreign car maker fielding a car in NASCAR is almost like peeing on the Alamo. Supposedly Davis built a truck like those driven in the Craftsman Truck Series for Toyota, and used a Dodge engine. I’m not saying that Davis is guilty and I hope he’s not but if he is he might ruin the careers of two of the more personable drivers in the sport. The other is the fact that NASCAR is paying $250,000 annually to Jessie Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition so the good Rev. won’t boycott them for not having any minority drivers. First off I don’t understand that sort of boycott. There aren’t that many African-American NASCAR fans. There are some, but not a lot, and I don’t understand why a boycott of that nature would carry much weight. Plus I can’t agree with what Jackson is demanding. If there is an African- American who has the talent and skills to race in NASCAR, and no it’s not just turning left and driving fast, then fine. No one, however, who is not qualified to be out on that track should be there. In other sports if you try and take part and don’t know what you’re doing the worst that’ll happen is you’ll embarrass yourself or pull a muscle. If you get out in a race and don’t know what you’re doing you could kill yourself and take a half dozen people with you. It hardly seems worth the risk to put a token in NASCAR. When NASCAR chooses to become politically correct to attract a wider audience then I see the shows of patriotism and support for the troops going by the wayside. Then they’ll stop doing the opening prayer for fear of offending someone or other. Then the rednecks will go and the love of money will claim some more victims. The victims, as in other sports, will be the fans. ------------ About the author: Jonathan Farlow is a frustrated writer/librarian and lives in Archdale, NC with his wife Kathy and daughter Sara. Visit his web site. You can read some of his stories there. Feedback is welcomed. Email: jonathan-farlow@excite.com Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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