Move to cable brings mixed blessings for the Brickyard

They're dusting off documentaries and expanding studio shows, bumping baseball games and regular programming, turning the Worldwide Leader into a week-long celebration of speed. After six years in the wilderness, ESPN is returning to televise races in NASCAR's premier series. And it's making sure that every sports fan in America knows it.

Including the late-night replays, it adds up to 66 hours of coverage surrounding Sunday's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, ESPN's first Cup-level broadcast since Jerry Nadeau won the rain-delayed season finale at Atlanta in 2000. For the pioneering sports network, it's an important week. There's a lot of back-slapping, new toys like the "Draft Track" -- which purports to show how air flows around a race car -- and talk of coming home for an entity whose airtime played a key role in a fledgling NASCAR's growth.

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It's all very impressive, yet it obscures one important fact: Nextel Cup's annual stop at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, when the most famous racetrack in the world hosts NASCAR's second-biggest event of the season, is being moved to cable TV.

Races at Pocono or Martinsville are on cable. But tradition-laden Indianapolis? Except for one instance in 1995, when rain pushed the event to late in the day and ESPN broadcast the race on tape the next day, the Brickyard has been a staple of over-the-air network television since its inception. ABC aired it from 1994-2000, with NBC following the next six years. While the flat, 2.5-mile oval hasn't always produced the best stock-car action, the marriage of Indy's history with the popularity and scope of America's biggest racing series produced an electric atmosphere ready-made for television's biggest stage.

And now it belongs to ESPN, which thanks to a juggled NASCAR schedule -- Indy and Pocono have switched places since last year -- will make its much-anticipated return on the same week as one of the sport's premier events. It's a mixed blessing. ESPN brings with it the casual sports fans that NASCAR, and chairman Brian France in particular, have made a mission to convert. At the same time it's tough to shake the notion that the Brickyard is being used, its marquee reputation siphoned off to give a boost to a new TV partner, and suffering a demotion to cable in the process.

"I obviously don't subscribe to that thought," said Norby Williamson, ESPN executive vice president. "I think you have to look no further than one of the most cherished franchises in the history of sports, and that's Monday Night Football. We moved Monday Night Football to ESPN after a tremendous run on ABC, and were able to continue to sort of evolve it, and it was a huge win for the company. I think the sports fan was served properly. As the world changes here, as the world evolves, we've seen other things like that happen as well, even with the NBA. The NBA has deals with TNT and ESPN. To me, it's a natural evolution of where things are going. The history used to be the broadcast networks, and that's where it is. Well, the world is changing, and we have an obligation to change with the world."

Maybe. ESPN is in 94.2 million households, ESPN2 in another 93.8 million. But not everyone gets cable. The NBA's television ratings have suffered a precipitous decline in recent years, in some eyes because the league agreed to a contract that placed too heavy an emphasis on cable TV. And if ESPN does to the Brickyard what it's done to Monday Night Football -- shoehorning a pathetically miscast Tony Kornheiser into an analyst's role, and interviewing celebrity guests during games -- race fans will be marching on Bristol, Conn., first thing Monday morning. (Continued)