Clear as Labor Day: Move of race west was wrong (cont'd)

Can you tell that from one crowd? Yes, you can, if that crowd is at Atlanta, a place with a mostly traditional fan base that's often struggled to get people through the turnstiles for the exact same product that was on display Sunday night. You can tell from the wails of protest that followed the removal of the Labor Day date from Darlington, which happened on the heels of other traditional tracks like Rockingham and North Wilkesboro losing races, and fostered a sense of bitterness and disillusionment among many of what should have been NASCAR's most ardent fans.

The announcement of June 3, 2003 -- when NASCAR sacrificed one of its longest-running traditions for a new race in a bigger, yet fickle market that had lost two speedways already -- was a debacle waiting to happen. To too many people, it smacked of a sport overcome by rampant ambition, and out of touch with the grassroots fans who had built it.

You can see why it occurred, of course. NASCAR had been emboldened by successes in markets like Kansas City and Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth, and was in the midst of a necessary nationwide expansion that saw it thrive almost anywhere it went. California, with a population base of 18 million people and a run of sold-out spring events behind it, seemed a perfect candidate for a second date.

But NASCAR chose the wrong date, and took it from the wrong speedway in the wrong part of the world. Once the novelty wore off, the crowds began to suffer: 102,000 in 2006, followed by 85,000 in 2007, followed by 70,000 -- about what Darlington draws -- in 2008. The weather was always too hot, the market always too indifferent, track management too fixated on Hollywood rather than less-glamorous Inland Empire where the facility makes its home.

And beneath it all, the simmering resentment of many hardcore fans who felt their sport had sold itself out. Now, while NASCAR may have its roots in Appalachian bootleggers, it is not a provincial sport. It absolutely should race anywhere; from Lowe's Motor Speedway to Los Angeles, it thinks it can put on a good show. And for all they've meant to NASCAR, there are some traditional fans out there with a rather myopic world view, who think the sport should still compete on dirt tracks and that North Wilkesboro would be fine to race on tomorrow.

Sorry, but this isn't 1985 anymore. NASCAR is a big-league sport with a national fan base, and a return to Bowman-Gray Stadium is about as likely as the New York Yankees playing in a minor-league park. Time to face reality.

But Labor Day? Labor Day was too much. Goodness knows how much goodwill NASCAR might have built among its traditional fans if, in the midst of its national expansion, it had just left Labor Day alone. But the choice was made, and the sport paid the price. Rubber-stamping the schedule switch between California and Atlanta, in which the former received a Chase date and the latter the Labor Day slot, was a tacit admission that the experiment did not work. Sunday's crowd was both a warm homecoming, and a clear message from the fan base about where Labor Day racing belongs.

"I don't think there's any doubt about it," said Clark, who spent some of this past weekend roaming his track's campgrounds, and receiving mostly positive feedback about the new date. "Labor Day may be more special to people in the Southeast than in any other part of the country, I don't know. I'm speculating on that. But they definitely want to go somewhere and do something special with their friends and have some fun on Labor Day. They showed us that loud and clear this weekend."

Of course, it wasn't perfect. Evidently, demand was so heavy at Atlanta's ticket office in the last two weeks prior to the race that agents manning both telephones and walk-up windows had to let some calls go unanswered. Clark said changes will be made so that doesn't happen again. As the recent history of NASCAR's Labor Day weekend race goes, that's not a bad problem to have.

"I guess we'd rather have those problems than going down to [U.S. Route] 19/41 and looking down the highway and saying, 'Hold the show up, we've got one more car coming,'" Clark said. "I remember doing that a time or two."

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer.