COMMENTARY: Pandering To The ADD Fan

Daytona International Speedway announced yesterday that as part of a record purse of more than $19 million, the track will pay a $200,000 bonus to the driver who leads lap 100 – the halfway lap -- in this month’s season-opening Daytona 500.

“There is plenty of incentive for drivers to run up front the entire race, but even more so at the halfway point and the last lap of the Daytona 500,” said DIS President Joie Chitwood in a news release announcing the program.” The good news is that the fine folks in Daytona Beach are trying. They’re promoting the heck out of the “Great American Race,” adding what they consider to be spice to the soup, rather than simply clasping their hands and praying for a sold-out grandstand.  

Unfortunately, our friends at DIS have bought into the erroneous belief that NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing is… well, boring. They’ve begun pandering to a group of race fans demanding that something – anything – bring them to their feet in a screaming fit of euphoric bliss, every minute of every day.

As a whole, our society has been decimated by a mass outbreak of Attention Deficit Disorder. We fast-forward through movies, skipping past those pesky plot points in order to determine “Who Done It” and move on to whatever comes next. We heat our pre-packaged meals in a microwave oven, eating them over the sink because cooking and washing dishes take too long. We eschew old-fashioned conversation in favor of Twitter, dumbing our thoughts down to 140 characters or less in the interest of time.

NASCAR Nation has been particularly hard-hit by this epidemic. Our demand for constant stimulation has become so overwhelming that for many, the Daytona 500 is no longer good enough. Our insistence on instant gratification has rendered us incapable of enjoying the action, strategy and competitiveness of a full, 500-mile race. Incapable of waiting for the actual finish, we now demand a “Halfway Bonus” to spice-up the middle stages of the race and make our favorite driver risk it all for our entertainment pleasure, every single lap.

Last year, Talladega Superspeedway attempted a similar ploy, offering a $100,000 bonus to the driver who created the 100^th lead change in October’s Good Sam Club 500. The track’s previous race had produced a record 88 lead changes, breaking the previous mark of 87 set just one race earlier. Track President Grant Lynch – like Daytona’s Chitwood – bought into the “bonus money makes drivers try harder” premise, anteing up a six-figure bonus that resulted in reams of pre-race publicity, but few results on race day.

Talladega’s $100,000 bonus went unclaimed last fall, despite a highly competitive event that tallied 72 lead changes. Why weren’t the drivers beating their brains out trying to run-up the number of lead changes? And more importantly, why did drivers like Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Carl Edwards – all of whom had very fast cars and would have been prime contenders to claim that $100,000 bonus – never go to the front until the very end of the race?

The answer is simple. Because no matter how we try, we cannot make the middle matter.

It’s the Daytona 500, not the Daytona 250. This is big-time professional stock car racing, not Youth League soccer, where no score is kept and everyone gets a popsicle after the game. NASCAR races are marathon events, not sprints, and fans incapable of understanding the difference deserve education, not pandering.

If we are no longer capable of enjoying a full, 500-mile event the way our fathers and grandfathers did, maybe it’s time to simply admit defeat. Let’s pull the plug on live, flag-to-flag TV coverage, since people say they’re sleeping through the middle 300 miles anyway. Let’s revert back to the “Good Old Days” when the race was delivered in an easy-to-digest, 30-minute highlight package a week after it took place; showcasing the start, a couple of wrecks and the final 10 laps.

That way, we’ll have more time to devote to the non-stop excitement of our VideoStation 3, where someone’s head is exploding at all times.