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.

But ultimately NASCAR needs ESPN, which virtually ignored the series when it didn't have a stake in the game. Indianapolis seems OK with the bargain, and more than pleased with the multiple-format, wall-to-wall coverage ESPN is capable of bestowing upon its biggest events. That was never more evident than Monday night, when ESPN aired a documentary on the growth of NASCAR, pushing Major League Baseball games -- which featured Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester's return from cancer and Barry Bonds' pursuit of the home run record -- to the Deuce.

"Maybe 10 years ago, there would be an issue for us, because of the way network TV was. But nowadays, with so many choices and coverage and reach, and really the whole ABC/ESPN system they have in terms of exposing the event, I think the benefits of being the first event on ESPN and how they're going to treat it, I don't think there's really a concern," said Joie Chitwood, Indianapolis Motor Speedway's president.

"When you look at [ESPN's] ability to bring so many things to the table, it's an advantage, no doubt it is. They've done such a great job with some of the other events they've covered, like Duke-North Carolina basketball, just in the way they kind of immerse themselves in the event and give people a different look at it. I think that's an interesting opportunity."

But it still seems odd, like grabbing the clicker and finding the AFC Championship game or the final round of the U.S. Open on cable TV. It's just part of a strange summer, one where NASCAR has been without a network broadcast since Dover, nearly two months ago, while the Indy Racing League has had four such appearances during that same span. While the Brickyard is airing Sunday on ESPN, parent network ABC -- which picks up Nextel Cup coverage at Richmond, on the eve of the Chase -- will broadcast the U.S. Senior Open and the Arena Football League championship.

Indy taking a back seat to the San Jose Sabercats? It sure seems like it on the surface. But Chitwood emphasizes the big picture. "At the end of the day, this sport is all about growth -- trying to get more fans to show up in person, to watch on TV, to buy merchandise," he said. "You want to make it easier for them. Most folks in the household know what channel ESPN is."

They do. ESPN aired 262 Cup-level races between 1981 and 2000, when it was squeezed out by FOX and NBC in a $2.4 billion deal. This is a very different ESPN, less innocent, more arrogant, toeing the line between coverage and boosterism, taking more criticism than praise. But race fans are traditional sorts, and they remember the coverage the burgeoning sports network provided to their series that no one else would. Those fond memories should afford ESPN something of a honeymoon period that other NASCAR television partners didn't have.

"The motorsports fan identifies with the brand awareness of ESPN, and what we bring with our NASCAR coverage, and how NASCAR and ESPN held hands and grew up together," said lead announcer Dr. Jerry Punch. "NASCAR went from a regional sport to a national stage, and ESPN had just launched ESPN2, and suddenly qualifying and other shows were on ESPN2 and NASCAR and other sports helped take that to a rapid rise. I think a lot of fans remember where we were in our coverage and the relationships we had with drivers, and the fans would want this sport to come back on ESPN."

They would. But maybe not this week.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.