Don't expect them to come just because you've built it

The fans who attend races at Kentucky Speedway have proven themselves a hardy bunch. The first major NASCAR event at the 1.5-mile facility, a Craftsman Truck Series race in 2000, was preceded by two days of rain that left dirt parking lots impassable, snarled traffic for miles on a nearby interstate, and forced officials to close the track entrance with many still waiting to get in. But despite the oppressive conditions, 63,750 people -- an attendance record for the series -- still managed to trudge through the mud, the rain and slop and watch Greg Biffle win.

The turnout opened eyes to the fervor for stock-car racing that existed in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio, a region whose only previous taste of NASCAR's national divisions was a 1951 event on a fairgrounds track at Bainbridge, Ohio, won by Fonty Flock. The oval located midway between Cincinnati and Louisville continues to be a hit at the turnstiles, with its annual Nationwide Series event regularly drawing sellout crowds larger than even those at some Sprint Cup venues.

• Send David your thoughts

In an era where some facilities face glaring attendance issues, Kentucky Speedway would seem a natural fit for a Sprint Cup date of its own. There are plans to increase capacity from its current 66,089 to more than 101,000, ready to be enacted if the call ever comes from Daytona Beach. But the call hasn't come. In NASCAR's eyes, the region already has a Sprint Cup date -- in Indianapolis, 153 miles away. Clearly, there's no room on NASCAR's overstuffed schedule for another event weekend. So the speedway sued NASCAR and racetrack arm International Speedway Corp., hoping that the courts would give them what the calendar and the sanctioning body would not.

The end of that quixotic legal quest came Monday, when federal judge William O. Bertelsman dismissed a suit in which Kentucky Speedway had demanded $200 million in damages and asked that ISC be forced to sell some of its racetrack holdings. Although the racetrack will appeal, antitrust lawsuits against sports leagues are routinely shot down. Even the victories -- like the one obtained by the U.S. Football League, which won $3 in its legal challenge to the NFL -- are hollow. This case is effectively finished, as is perhaps Kentucky's hope of ever landing a Sprint Cup date.

In so many ways, Kentucky Speedway has been great for NASCAR. It's proven that the Nationwide and Craftsman Truck circuits, so overwhelmed by the Sprint Cup tour on combination event weekends, can flourish on their own given the right place and the right blend of conditions. It's proven that there's a huge demand for live NASCAR racing in a part of the country that was underserved until Jerry Carroll built his track in Sparta. It's put needed pressure on some of these existing Sprint Cup venues that struggle at the ticket window, issuing an unspoken challenge that if they can't do it, Kentucky Speedway can.

But in the process, ambition and frustration obscured reality -- both of a packed Sprint Cup schedule, and the protection major sports leagues have traditionally found in court. Kentucky might have been hoping for a replay of the Ferko lawsuit, brought against NASCAR by a shareholder of Texas Motor Speedway in 2002, and a similar settlement that would net the track a coveted Sprint Cup race.

Instead we have another reminder that even if you build a stadium or arena or racetrack, there is no guarantee of a team or a date. Regardless of the line from Field of Dreams, you can build it, but they don't have to come. Memphis or Sacramento or Birmingham can build the grandest football stadium in America, and the NFL has every right to turn them down flat. So does NASCAR. Is Kentucky worthy of a Sprint Cup date? Sure, but so is Nashville. Las Vegas and Kansas are worthy of two. Get in line. No sports facility is entitled to an event by its mere presence, any more than a writer is entitled to having a book published just because he's written it.

Just ask the folks in Kansas City, who built the 18,500-seat, $276 million Sprint Center despite not having a major-league team to play in it. The hope was that the facility would lure the NHL's Penguins away from Pittsburgh, which has since extended its lease and locked the team up through 2040. Then Kansas City set its eyes on the Nashville Predators, which were instead sold to new owners in Tennessee. There's no guarantee they'll get any team. Right now, a few Garth Books concerts and the Big 12 basketball tournament will have to suffice.

And remember what happened in St. Petersburg? Sports-crazy officials there began construction on what was then called the Florida Suncoast Dome in 1986, in a bid to entice the Chicago White Sox to leave aging Comiskey Park. The ballpark was completed in 1990, without a primary tenant. The city made overtures to the Mariners and Giants, without success. The Tampa Bay area didn't get a Major League Baseball team until it was awarded an expansion franchise in 1995, nearly a decade after the effort began, and by which time the dome had been derided as a drab, much-maligned place to play.

Now there's Kentucky, which tried to make up for its lack of foresight through litigation. So much was working against it -- the unlikelihood of NASCAR to settle again after the Ferko suit, the lack of wiggle room on the 38-event schedule, the relatively close proximity between northern Kentucky and Indianapolis, the protection the federal government has historically afforded pro sports leagues. But they forged ahead anyway. And as a result, the fans in northern Kentucky seem as far away from live Sprint Cup racing as they've ever been.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer