New book focusing on sport's growth worth read

If you have any questions about how NASCAR went from southern-based fixture to by-God sporting phenomenon, you can find the answer in Mark Yost's new book.

Titled 200-MPH Billboard: The Inside Story of How Big Money Changed NASCAR, the book starts at the beginning, takes you through the middle and winds up at the end, just like all good books do, and when you're done, you'll have a pretty good understanding about how some pretty smart people went about changing the landscape of American sports to make NASCAR the juggernaut it is today.

Yost, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native who calls Lake Elmo, Minn., his home, has been reporting on business and sports for nearly 20 years, working for such publications as The Wall Street Journal and Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal.

The foreword is by NBC newsman Brian Williams, and the book is littered with quotes from most of the folks who made NASCAR what it is today, including several members of the France family, Humpy Wheeler and his daughter Patti, and the legendary Tom Cotter, founder of Cotter Communications, the first mega-agency outside of R.J. Reynolds' Sport Marketing Enterprises.

There is heavy reportage from National Speed Sport News, which was founded in 1934 and thus pre-dates the formation of NASCAR. Its editor, the venerable Chris Economaki, is still one of the keenest observers of motor racing from both competition and economic points of view. He is also one of Yost's heroes.

Yost has done a fair share of reporting for NSSN through the years, one of an outstanding crop of former employees that includes Keith Waltz and Jerry Gappens of Lowe's Motor Speedway, J.J. O'Malley of the International Speedway Corp. and many others.

In his introduction, Yost states that he asked each one of the companies he interviewed three questions: Why NASCAR? How do you leverage your sponsorship? And how do you know it's money well spent?

Yost follows through on that promise, as well as immersing the reader in the down-and-dirty negotiations, the quantum leaps in strategic thinking and the genuine innovation that went into taking NASCAR from dusty Southern ovals to palaces of speed and performance, all in the space of about 40 years.

From "God, Goodyear and Gatorade" to the Chase for the Nextel Cup, the author hits the high points with authority and drills the low points with even-handed analysis.

The book, pleasingly plump at 320 pages, has 15 chapters, the foreword, an introduction and an epilogue. Some books of this type leave you gasping for air in the midst of statistics, concepts and strategies; this one doesn't. You won't get lost in any of the chapters, and you'll spend a lot of time digesting the story rather than trying to figure out the concept.

Even the chapter titles are amusing. The first one, detailing the overview of how NASCAR earned the attention of corporate America, is appropriately named, "A Good Old Boy Goes Courting." Chapter Six is slugged, "Mama, I'm Gonna Be on TV."

By the time he hits the epilogue, Yost has covered the pertinent points of NASCAR's rise to American sports stardom. In the final chapter, however, he hits the challenges that still face the sport today, such as the plateau of the fan base at an estimated 75 million; the cost of attending races (especially the Daytona 500); and the disquieting erosion of TV viewership over the past couple of seasons.

After reading the book, there are several conclusions that can be drawn.

First, this offering from Motorbooks is exhaustively researched, but it draws much from the author's personal observations too. A Dale Earnhardt fan from way back, Yost looks at NASCAR's business through two prisms: his training as a writer and his training as a fan. The combination works well.

Second, unlike many of the authors on sports business, Yost's writing style is easy and comparatively less dense than almost all of them, yet he still gets the story across in language plain and proper.

Third, Yost has done much thinking on the sport over its generations, and as such has an appreciation of the history of it as well as the financial aspects. Among today's NASCAR writers and especially among business writers, that is a nearly non-existent talent.

In short, the book offers the reader a comprehensive look at the watershed events in NASCAR history that pertain to it becoming what it is today and some explanation of how and why and where. If you like success stories, this is one of them, told by a guy who has been there and done that in racing and in business.

This book gets a strong buy from this writer, and hey, it's just in time for Christmas! You can get 200-MPH Billboard from the NASCAR.COM Superstore and major book retailers.