Former sponsors are being unfairly pushed to the side

A fan sent me an e-mail the other day. Nick Deak was his name.

Didn't seem like a bad guy -- maybe a little frustrated, which is a bad state to be in when you're around NASCAR racing to any degree and on just about any level.

• Send Dave your thoughts
• Dave's Community page

But a nice guy all the same -- with his heart certainly in the right place.

It seems Nick was aggravated. He could be in good company with some of what's been going on lately in NASCAR-land: Penalties on, penalties off and penalties from who-knows-where; inconsistencies in TV programming and an inundation of commercials; and my driver was responsible for wrecking your driver.

I got news for you on two of the three. Wrecking -- and people being responsible for 'em -- has always been part of racing and always will be. And ads are an inevitable part of free TV, so I think you ought to get over that, too.

Get up and get some exercise while they're playing.

But Nick was right about one thing. He was irked with the departure of some sponsors, some longer-term than others; but whatever their tenure, he was irked at the media's seeming willingness to cheaply sell off the equity established by some long-term supporters of the sport.

As far as I can tell, when sponsor A, B or C signs on the dotted line and forks over what I assume is a big check for the naming rights for a series, or an event; those rights begin from the time they execute the check and per the terms of their contract.

They haven't bought the history of the series or the event and the legacy that came before their involvement.

Depending upon which side their bread's buttered on, the media has a hard time with that. It's easier to say Richard Petty, or Dale Earnhardt is a seven-time Sprint Cup champion than to creatively establish a way around it.

Maybe they think it's too hard to keep track of. Maybe they think it's confusing. Maybe they're lazy.

Baaah, baaah, baaah -- like so many sheep they mouth lines like "... Mark Martin won his first Nationwide Series race since 2005 ..."

Whoops. That header was actually on a familiar site. Don't care. If you're worried about word length or character count, it's simple: Make it Martin's, "... first series victory since 2005."

Bust a move

Kasey Kahne channels his boy-band persona in the newest spot featuring the "Allstate Girls" titled "Sponsorship."

• Watch the entire commercial
• Swan: Allstate girl dishes dirt

I understand that our industry, with it being more of a necessity in the TV and radio realm than in print, is couched in brevity. Don't say in 10 words what you can say in four.

In that milieu, explaining that Anheuser-Busch had a wonderful 26-year history of sponsoring the current Nationwide Series ain't gonna happen. Unfortunately, for them -- in many cases the sponsors simply get lost. And that's certainly not what they wanted when they signed the big checks.

But what they need to work hard on now is establishing an identity and creating their own history, because as far as I know, they haven't bought history when they wrote the check.

So what's the solution? I don't know. It isn't easy. But the memory of Bill France Sr., Charlotte Motor Speedway, Anheuser-Busch and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, to me, makes it worth the effort.

Quick Hits

• Anyone else wonder why both certain SPEED practice reports as well as FOX's broadcast of Sunday's Sprint Cup race were plagued by a severe lag between the booth announcers proclaiming there was "trouble in Turn 4" and any camera switching to that incident?

To give them their due, at least they had copious replays to detail what they were talking about when it happened, but it seems to me that switch typically would be instantaneous, whereas this weekend on several occasions it just dragged on before the action was shown.

• And is anyone else wondering about Kasey Kahne's image? Before Speedweeks at Daytona, I noticed my first Kahne Budweiser billboard, somewhere in Daytona Beach and relatively near the speedway. But to date that's the only Kahne / Budweiser media I've seen.

It ain't like I'm holding my breath waiting on the first one, but I about split laughing when a buddy of mine, last Sunday after the Allstate ad in which Kahne prances about in a heart-festooned uniform, unleashed this witticism.

"Budweiser's gotta be goin' nuts," my friend said. "There's their boy, in a leotard with hearts all over it, prancing around like Tinkerbell. You think that's a good fit for Budweiser's image?"

Don't know. I guess time will tell.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer