The Daytona 500 is supposed to be NASCAR’s version of the Super Bowl.
It’s definitely not.
First and foremost, the obvious: The Super Bowl determines the NFL’s champion. The Daytona 500 is the first event of the NASCAR season and seems to include 30+ cars / drivers.
Secondly, while the Super Bowl is not always a great game, it’s typically enjoyable to watch even for people who aren’t really football fans.
I tried to watch the Daytona 500 this year. I really REALLY tried, but it just wasn’t in the cards.
Over two hours of delays because of some pothole? REALLY!? THIS is NASCAR’s biggest event of the year, and they have POTHOLES?!
I heard the comments from some of the drivers and analysts, stating that they don’t want the Daytona track to be re-paved (something that hasn’t happened SINCE THE LATE 1970’s!!). They say that part of the appeal to the track is that it’s NOT smooth. They LIKE the bumps and grooves. It makes for more of a challenge to fix up their cars to handle those conditions.
That’s fine, I can buy into that argument.
What I can’t handle is the fact that the track management folks KNOW that the track has problems and yet they clearly weren’t prepared to fix a pothole in a reasonable amount of time. Almost an ENTIRE NFL football game could’ve been played during the delay.
I changed the channel, but I came back later. When I did return, there were less than 4 laps left. Now for those of you who saw the Daytona 500 (or even heard about it), you’re probably predicting that I’m going to complain about how there were a couple wrecks and the race was on a caution flag for a while…
No, I don’t have a problem with that.
My problem is that, as a sports fan who doesn’t typically follow much NASCAR, I’m looking at the screen, trying to figure out what’s going on, and when the announcer is trying to do his job, he’s COMPLETELY leaving out any references to the car numbers or the sponsors or the colors of the car. He just keeps talking about the driver names, and because I don’t know more than 3 or 4 drivers, I don’t really have a clue what’s going on. If it were as simple as “Dale Junior makes his move into second place”, I could figure that out. It’s easy to spot where first and second place are, and so I can figure out which car the announcer is talking about. But when the announcer says that some driver I’ve never heard of is “making their move” but doesn’t reference a car number / sponsor / color / position, I end up clueless and frustrated.
If NASCAR wants a Super Bowl, it should take the final race of the year, cut the number of cars in the race by half, only taking the top cars in the points standings. Then with 10% of the race left, only let the top 8 cars race to the finish, with the rest of the cars having to watch from the pit. I can keep track of 8 cars, and there’d be plenty more drama in it for everybody. The sponsors of the cars who do make it to the final 8 would get a lot more air time, the drivers have the chance to become more popular because casual fans can actually pay attention to what’s going on, and old school NASCAR fans will have to learn to like it.
The Delay sucked. Something needs to be done. But now a bunch of counterpoints.
The pothole happened during the race. The pothole is more akin to it raining and the Super Bowl field getting torn up because of said heavy rain. It may have been a crack earlier in the week. The bigger crime would have been to not finish the race. Which would have deprived us of one of the most entertaining final 3 laps in an auto race i’ve seen in the last decade.
Daytona is a HUGE Deal. LIke winning the Indianapolis 500. Or the Kentucky Derby. Or a major in Golf or Tennis. The size and scope and importance to the competitors is equal to that of the players in the Super Bowl. You’re right that its not about a “Championship” its about winning the biggest race Nascar has. Indy doesn’t happen at the end of the Indy Car season either. But its HUGE.
As an event. Combined with its individual importance to the competitors, teams, and fans? It IS that sport’s Super Bowl. They aren’t saying it IS hte super bowl. They’re saying its NASCAR’s super bowl.
Dale Earnhardt won 4 or 5 Winston Cup Titles, and didn’t win a Daytona 500 until late in his career. It was the ONE thing he never won. And that dude won EVERYTHING.
Shame on the announcers, but they scrolll names with car numbers up top the entire time. Also like in other sports the cars they are showing are 9 times out of 10 the cars they are talking about.
correction:
Dale Earnhardt won 4 or 5 Winston Cup Titles, and didn’t win a Daytona 500 until late in his career. It was the ONE thing he never won. And that dude won EVERYTHING. So when he finally won Daytona it was something EPIC. It was huge, and it was the crown jewel in his other worldly hall of fame career. Cuz while he was as successful as any other drive and one of the greatest of all time? People always said, “But he hasn’t won Daytona”. Its THAT big to the sport, its competitors and its fans.
I won’t dispute that the race is a huge accomplishment that any driver would love to put on his (or her?) resume, and if you want to say it’s NASCAR’s version of The Kentucky Derby, I’m on-board with that, but the size of the accomplishment isn’t on board with winning a Super Bowl. To my knowledge, you don’t have to win anything to get to the Daytona 500, so technically anyone who qualifies to be in it (of which there are 43 car / driver combinations) can win it. It’s just sorta lame that NASCAR tries to make it seem like this is the Cream of the Crop racing to see who’s best, and in reality, the 43rd best driver could win the thing if there’s some sort of accident and that driver happens to be lucky enough to get the checkered flag. In football, you could have a team which gets on a good winning streak and beats a superior team in the Super Bowl, and you can talk all you want about how the winning team wasn’t the best team in the league, but they have qualifications to show why they deserve to be considered one of the top few.
In short, the Super Bowl is more about a season-long achievement given to the best team. The Daytona 500 is a high profile event which can be won by whomever combines skill, planning and a bit of luck on one given Sunday. Your comment about Dale Earnhardt Sr winning 4 or 5 titles but not winning a Daytona 500 until late in his career is just more support to the point I was making.
Oh, come on, I have so many things to say that I don’t even know where to start. I agree with most of the things that SirMHays said. I think that you are minimalizing what it takes to get into the Daytona 500 and how boring it would be with fewer cars. It takes a GREAT driver to get through that crowd and consistiently stay in the front.
I also think you are looking at this the wrong way too…the NASCAR championship is at the end of the season, but Daytona is the Premier event of the year. Winning the Daytona 500 is a crowning achievement in NASCAR and I think that non-NASCAR fans just don’t get it. People tune into the Daytona 500 that don’t watch any other race all year.
I have to say, it was the best Daytona 500 since 2007 when Boyer came across the finish line upside down and on fire. For Dale to push forward through the crowd from 10th to 2nd in one lap was a feat.
I will give you the one point of being new and not knowing who everyone is. The announcers could do a better job there. Even for me it was hard to remember that #1 was McMurray and not Truex.
Sorry you feel that way you do about the race. Track conditions were unfortunate, but it is what it is. I liked the racers that wanted to just say it was there, go around it. Sorry that my comments are all over the place, but I am tired tonight.