TV ratings, tickets obscure NASCAR's real challenge

Television ratings for the championship plummet. High-dollar seats fill with glitterati and corporate types, while average fans fret over getting priced out. Attendance becomes stagnant, and national interest wanes. Concerns arise over a recently inked TV deal that puts more events on cable. Some wonder if the sport expanded too quickly, and if a few international contests will help shake off the malaise.

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Yes, things certainly do look bleak for NASCAR. But that's not the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing in 2007. It's the National Basketball Association in 2003.

Remember those days? It's tough to now, as Kobe and LeBron and D-Wade lead the NBA into a postseason that promises to be every bit as intriguing as last year's, when television ratings began to rise again and some juice returned to the league Magic and Bird made famous. What a turnaround that was from the early 2000s, when ratings for the Finals tumbled 36 percent and people wondered if the NBA was on its way to joining the National Hockey League on the fringe of national consciousness.

No less than the business icon Forbes magazine declared, "The NBA is Blowing It." The Christian Science Monitor asked, "The NBA: Why Aren't You Watching?" Major newspapers painted a gloomy portrait of a sport that had become too boring and featured too few stars, as if a league with 60 years of history behind it and played in 29 cities was in danger of somehow sliding off the edge of the globe.

And yet NBA-licensed basketballs continue to bounce from coast to coast, powering a league that parlayed a handful of dynamic young stars into a ratings resurgence last spring. It's needed perspective these days, as NASCAR suffers through its first genuine lull since storming toward the front of the American sports landscape. "As Growth Hits a Wall, NASCAR Faces an Uncertain Future," the New York Times stated Sunday, echoing a theme first explored last November in USA Today.

Welcome, NASCAR. When the national media says you've gone stagnant, you've truly hit the big time. (Continued)