Bask in the good, NASCAR, but don't ignore the bad

Humpy Wheeler strode to the podium at Roush Fenway Racing on the final stop of the whirlwind known as the Sprint Cup media tour as if, finally, after all the previous proclamations made over four days at various venues, here was someone with something really important to say.

Wheeler ended up speaking less as the president of Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., which hosted the media tour, and more as a veteran of four decades in motorsports, mostly involved with NASCAR.

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Like everyone else, Wheeler heard Brian France's state of the sport address where France, chairman and CEO of NASCAR, said that the big news of the impending year was that there was no real news. France trumpeted the fact that as NASCAR barrels headlong into the 2008 season, the emphasis is on changing as little as possible and doing whatever can be done to bring back a seemingly increasing number of annoyed longtime fans who have reacted negatively to years of aggressive change in the sport.

France and the rest of those who reside at the governing body's headquarters in Daytona Beach, Fla., don't like to talk much about declining television ratings, sagging ticket sales or even whether or not a total of eight crunched "new cars" (that's what they now want everyone to call it, not that other thing they wanted everyone to call it previously) constitute "a lot" of junk metal at a Las Vegas test.

Wheeler, on the other hand, is almost always willing to talk openly about anything.

"I think the central theme of this [media tour] has been that we need to get back to our roots," Wheeler said. "And I'm going to tell you something nobody else has told you here: ticket sales are flat or they are below [normal], and ratings are down, and it's not because we've got 300 cable channels. It's because we need to get back to our roots.

"We need to make this car of today work. And whatever NASCAR has gotta do to make it work and get us back to racing where we're puttin' black doughnuts on the sides of the cars and not making felony offenses out of 'em, we need to do. And when we do that, it's all going to change and turn around and we can do all the other stuff. We can blow people up and bring Robosaurus in, and all that."

Bring back the dinosaur?

The Robosaurus reference to one of Wheeler's great promotions at LMS was meant as a joke. That is the beauty of Wheeler. While he has never met a promotion he didn't like -- or at least considered before discarding it -- he also knows that at the end of the day it's the racing that folks come out to see at the Sprint Cup tracks, or tune in to see on television.

Only after that is in order can you fire up the flame-breathing giant robot dinosaurs or the favored music acts of the day and hope that they actually have something to do with putting butts in the seats at tracks or on their couches at home, and keeping them there. (Continued)