TV ratings, tickets obscure NASCAR's real challenge (cont'd)

It happened to the NBA in the early 2000s. It happened to Major League Baseball in the late 1990s. It's happened to tennis and golf. Aside from the almighty NFL, every major American professional sports league has seen its popularity wax and wane over time. Some, like boxing, horse racing and open-wheel auto racing, are doomed by a combination of mismanagement and circumstance and never recover. Most do. The odds are overwhelming that NASCAR will fall into the latter category, and one day turn laps before just as many spectators and television viewers as it did at its apex.

But the lull is here, and it's a tough one to figure out. NASCAR is quick to blame the lower television ratings at the end of last season on lame-duck partner NBC, which saw its fall events as little more than lead-ins to Sunday Night Football broadcasts. So far this year, four of six comparable Nextel Cup events -- not including the Atlanta race, which was run on a Monday in 2006 due to rain -- are down in the ratings. And then along comes Texas, which easily wins the weekend, and gives NASCAR its highest rating in more than a month.

Of course, the Texas event fell just short of a sellout -- the second consecutive time that's happened in Fort Worth, and a touch concerning given that North Wilkesboro and Rockingham both went belly-up so the big track could have two dates -- but still sold 191,000 tickets. Martinsville, California and Atlanta failed to sell out, while Daytona, Las Vegas and Bristol did. And there's the good possibility that three of the next four Nextel Cup events -- Phoenix, Richmond and Darlington -- will be run before full houses.

So let's not exactly confuse this with the NHL, which would gleefully take any television rating above a 1, or even the NBA, which suffered through a ratings drop twice as bad as anything NASCAR has experienced over the last 14 months. This isn't a wholesale freefall into oblivion. At the ticket office and in the Nielsen box, gains come and go. Sports leagues, like all good businesses, take the long view.

But fan bases don't necessarily do the same thing, and therein lies NASCAR's greatest challenge. Basketball fans may not have liked it, but they seemed to accept the way the game changed after Magic, Michael and Larry moved on. Football fans didn't take it as a personal affront when the passing game usurped the rush. Yet the NASCAR community is filled with traditional fans who react like Brian France personally came to their homes and kicked their dogs before moving the Labor Day race to L.A.

Traditional fans backed NASCAR in the early days when no one else was watching. New fans, those with deeper pockets and from bigger cities, took it national. Somehow, NASCAR has to placate both groups. Traditional fans need to understand that every other major sports league benefited from national expansion, and that nothing can stay the same forever. New fans need to realize that many who came before them see this not as a sport, but as a prized heirloom passed from one generation to the next.

The disparity between those two groups needs to be reconciled. The traditionalists need to understand that foreign manufacturers and the Car of Tomorrow and beautiful people sipping chardonnay in a suite are here to stay. The newcomers need to grasp that this is much more than a way to entertain clients or sell product. NASCAR needs to learn how to move forward without forgetting its past, something it hasn't always been adept at.

The alternative is an erosion of the fan base, something much more dangerous than low Nielsen numbers or empty grandstand seats, something you can feel the approaching rumble of even today. NASCAR cannot allow that to happen. Once it does, the decline begins in earnest.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.