Auto racing has touted itself as America’s most popular sport, toting up the throngs that attend everything from a NASCAR Sprint Cup race to a Friday night action on a rural 1/4-mile dirt track. At the same time, NASCAR has blustered at times about how it has become the fastest-growing sport in the United States. But when push comes to shove -- and in sports these days that happens when it comes time to make out television schedules -- NASCAR has revealed that it still lives in fear of the National Football League. And why not? The NFL is the 800-pound gorilla of TV, influencing everything from the timing of other sporting events to the time the President makes national television addresses.
The latest example of NASCAR’s “respect” for the NFL’s power is its 2012 schedule. Based on the vague threat that the 2012 Super Bowl would take place on February 11 (geesh, nearly Valentine’s Day?) instead of the more traditional February 5, NASCAR moved its own Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, back a week to February 26. Since the Daytona extravaganza -- including the “preseason” Budweiser Shootout and the ever-popular Gatorade Duel -- occupies two weeks, this move assured that a NASCAR event would not take place on the same day as the Super Bowl. In a way, we see this as a shame because we would prefer some real auto racing -- like the shootout -- to the hours and hours of bland, useless pregame coverage of the Super Bowl. But it demonstrates quite clearly that NASCAR and its TV partners, who influence many of the scheduling shots, want to steer clear of the NFL whenever they can.
By moving the Daytona fortnight back a week, NASCAR was forced to ditch the bye week that came in the third week of the schedule. That probably isn’t a bad move anyway because it puts a race in a slot that competes only with the National Basketball Association (which might not have a season at all) and little else. At that point, the NFL is done and Major League Baseball hasn’t started. Yes, the National Hockey League is in full swing, but the crossover between its audience and NASCAR Sprint Cup is thought to be negligible. In fact the crossover between the hockey audience and anything is thought to be negligible, but that’s another story.
