Against my better judgement, I took another stab at one of those sportswriting contests on foxsports.com. This contest seems to be a little more NASCAR-themed, so I figured, "Hey. Something I used to muster a teensy bit of passion about. Hooray." And I had a go at it.
(Captain - in my post, I co-opted one of your comments to me about Kyle Petty and Moses Speedway. As payment, please accept a second copy of the Gin Blossoms' comeback CD, Money Grab.)
On the one hand, my contest entry has already garnered more feedback than my previous effort from last year, when I blogged to widespread apathy and disinterest.
On the other hand, I hate people.
See, people have a unique capability of completely missing the point. And I admit that this medium doesn't really allow for the kind of nuance that I specialize in - you know, the kind that takes me about 300 words to express; if you don't carry a big hammer to bludgeon your point home, then you're wasting keystrokes.
Still, people are fucking morons. Especially sports fans, who are tools and who have fucking ruined sports.
(I ought to write a guide. "So Your Audience Is Composed Of Morons: A Quick and Dirty Guide to Writing For Sports Talk Radio Enthusiasts.")
Every time my faith in human nature starts to be restored, I do something like this and end up being disappointed.
****
Anyway, about that contest. The topic:
As NASCAR roars into the second half of its 2007 season, what are the biggest issues facing the sport? How can it sustain the kind of phenomenal growth it’s enjoyed in the past decade? What needs to happen for the sport to appeal to a broader audience? More speed? More woman drivers? More engaging personalities? Let’s hear your detailed master plan for making NASCAR bigger and better.
In case you're interested - and I have no indication as to why you would be - my train wreck of a contest entry is here. I took kind of contrarian point of view that NASCAR sucks and needs to be imploded so we can start fresh. This rubbed some people the wrong way - people who, as I stated above, missed the point completely.
Update: OK, so it was all a bad joke. But my point remains legitimate, even if it was some sort of retarded "initiation."
Monday, July 16, 2007
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I read your post. Looked like the comments were made by people who are really, really proud of themselves for regularly posting on whatever site that was and feel that they've earned the right to be condescending.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I enjoyed it and I agree. I'm really depressed about how little I care about NASCAR anymore. I loved it so much when I first got into it, and then the grinding overexposure that had already been happening before I ever became involved just got worse. NASCAR Angels, for crissakes.
And there's just so little excitement. Sure, every once in a while they'll luck into an exciting finish like McMary at Daytona, or Tony Stewart will say something amusing and/or inflammatory, or a fluke like Gilliland winning at Kentucky in that demo derby car will happen, and I'll remember why I fell in love with the sport. But watching a few elite cars swap two-second leads for four hours just doesn't cut it.
Maybe the races aren't the problem--like you said, it's the way TV covers it. I've been to enough races to know that they're 100% more exciting in person--for obvious reasons, yes, but also because you can see the action taking place all over the track and not just the top five running in a straight line. You see, you know, actual passing, if you're there in person.
And maybe, just maybe, they could fix the cars. The CORN (car of right now) was supposed to do that, but the drivers say it's even worse than the other one. I've watched Back in the Day and seen people passing on the high line at Bristol in the '60s. They've got mega-millions and f-ing engineers devoted to this 24/7 and they can't make it happen now? You can't tell me they can't make a car that is safe and doesn't drive like a bobsled or a luge or the Concorde or whatever the current ones are like.
So that's one reason I'm paying so much attention to baseball this summer.
Ehhh, this post was a bit of a well-thought-out knee-jerk reaction; I had a bunch of hurt feelings when I wrote this and it probably showed through a bit much. I need to count to something higher than 10 before posting something like this. Like, 800.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I'd be a dick, too, if I was a part of something really special and/or neat, and then the masses come swarming in and mess it up for everyone. Kind of makes me glad that GbV never got bigger than what they did, because I'm sure I would have had the same dickheaded reaction to the nooooobs.
I posted something else (about Sunday's race), and the guy who was kind of the impetus for this blog post actually complimented me on it. I guess I'm "accepted" now, for whatever that's worth. I'll stop posting there in about a week.
Anyway, to your reply:
Yours was exactly the kind of reaction I was hoping to get, and your experience was kind of the one that I was subconsciously detailing. Not implying that you are/were a "fair-weather fan" - it's just that NASCAR makes it really easy to care at least a little bit about the sport, but if you're anything like me, you can't do something just a little bit ... if I'm going to be a fan, I'm going to be a fan all the way. In doing so, I'd rather seek out information and other things than have television and radio and the internet hammer me over the head with it.
I should repost a link to my NASCAR Angels post from a year ago. Thanks for bringing up that gawdawful turdfest.