The world knocks, and NASCAR opens the door

I grew up in the city that started the Civil War, the birthplace of American secession, a place where Fort Sumter gleams out in the harbor every sunny day. I know my Confederate generals and my Southeastern Conference football coaches. There's a dog in the backyard and an alligator in the pond beyond that. I know how to peel a shrimp, shuck an oyster, and catch a crab with a piece of chicken tied to a string. I take my tea sweet, my okra fried, my peanuts boiled and my grits mixed with a touch of butter and salt.

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The point of all this is to emphasize the fact that I'm a Southern boy -- always have been, always will be. I may prefer a Jon boat to a four-wheeler and be a bit uncomfortable with the idea of shooting live animals, but I'm Southern just the same. So rest assured that the points about to be made do not come from someone in a "new market," but rather a person with immediate family members who watch NASCAR every weekend, with an uncle who once built race engines, and with roots in a region of the country where the sport has been a presence for 60 years.

That said, it's time to face facts. Anyone who still believes that this sport belongs to one geographic corner of the United States is kidding themselves. More and more it belongs to the world, with drivers, manufacturers and sponsors from different corners of the globe wanting in on the action. And that's not a bad thing.

Because of its relative youth as a truly national major sports series, NASCAR has traditionally lagged behind other leagues in terms of the growing pains that accompany expansion. The schedule realignment that shut down tracks like North Carolina and North Wilkesboro speedways was similar to what the NFL went through in moving franchises from places like Portsmouth and Canton, Ohio, and what the NHL experienced in shifting teams from smaller Canadian markets to burgeoning cities in the Sun Belt. Now NASCAR is taking its first real steps toward a more global presence, something almost every other major sports league did a decade ago. And the purists are howling.

They fire off e-mails about Toyota and Juan Montoya that border on racist. They want to know why the Nationwide Series dares to compete in Canada and Mexico, when there are perfectly fine tracks here in the good ol' USA. They start tossing out references to Pearl Harbor at the mere mention of a Camry. They call Michael Waltrip and Joe Gibbs traitors. They want to know what all these foreigners like Dario Franchitti and Jacques Villeneuve are doing in a series that was supposed to be all-American.

Yes, there's a vicious undercurrent out there, one that seems to want it to be 1975 all over again so they can fly their Rebel battle flags, suck down their Winstons, and watch an Oldsmobile go around the track (in person, evidently, because back then NASCAR was rarely on TV). They pine for long-gone facilities that were terribly outdated or incapable of attracting enough spectators, and want a postseason banquet in Charlotte hosted by somebody like Larry the Cable Guy. And they're completely blind to the fact that such backward thinking is the easiest way to get left behind. (Continued)