[If you are not interested in NASCAR just skip this one.]
If you follow NASCAR, you probably know Jimmie Johnson drove the #48 Lowe's Hardware Chevrolet to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship again for the 5th consecutive time. This is an incredible feat because the competition is so strong. (Just a few years ago, there were some races in which the winner was the only car on the lead lap!)
All the same, this news has been greeted by horror from many of the fans,, including me. Some of the fans are so disgusted with the result that they're swearing off NASCAR.
A lot of the fans are leaving for other reasons. The television coverage, which is split between three networks (Fox, TNT, and ESPN/ABC), has been abominable. Most of the diehards are alienated by the coverage which focuses too much attention on the front-runners. If "muh driver" didn't make NASCAR's equivalent of the playoffs, the Chase, the only time you're going to see him in the coverage is if he goes into the wall or one of the Chasers pass him. Although you can now get a lot of news from the Internet about even a fringe team, you're not likely to see your driver or his car on the screen for more than a few fleeting moments.
In these belt-tightening times, that probably spells the death of some of the lesser-known teams. It's just not enough to have your sponsors' logos seen by the ticket buyers on the track; you've got to be seen on television.
For many fans going to a race is an annual affair. They arrive early in the week and camp out, and over the years, many fans have built once-a-year friendships which are renewed in the track's infield. Now some of those friendships are going to suffer because it's tough to budget for a week at the track when you're not sure if you're gonna have a job this time next year..
It seems as if more than half the loyal fans hate "The Chase," NASCAR's version of the playoffs, in which the final ten races pit the top dozen drivers against each other on the same track with the other (meaningless to the TV networks) 31 drivers who happen to show up each week. A recalculation of the standings awarding the points according to the same table used before the Chase shows Jimmie Johnson would be the runner-up to Kevin Harvick, with the margin of victory so wide that all Harvick needed was to simply show up at the final two races and cross the Starting Line each week.
So NASCAR got what it wanted. Going into the final race of the season, there were three drivers who had a legitimate shot at winning the Championship. Jimmie Johnson's Five-Peat would be by no means easy. That is until Kevin Harvick, the current points leader, was penalized for speeding on pit road. This time the "grassy knoll" was two other cars which came in with Harvick in the middle. Neither of them got a speeding penalty.
That penalty sent Harvick to the back of the field, but even at that, he clawed his way back through the field to finish third, a few seconds behind Johnson. Even if he'd beaten Harvick, Jimmie Johnson would have won the Championship.
Which brings me, er, back around the track. Many fans are not only jealous of his success, they're bored by Jimmie Johnson. He's the poster boy of the new NASCAR, which shed its past as a weekend contest between bootleggers, to become a sanitized corporate sport, complete with hospitality tents and luxury boxes. For cryin' out loud, Jimmie Johnson is from California!
The steady but unassuming Johnson has a highly burnished image calculated to please his corporate masters, Lowe's Hardware stores. You'll never see Jimmie Johnson and the words "DUI" or "other woman" in the same story. His sponsors love him but many fans grip and grasp but they can't find any purchase. He's just too slick and boring.
Put it to you this way... watching a bag of Lowe's concrete harden is more exciting than listening to Jimmie Johnson. He speaks in grammatically correct complete sentences and paragraphs, and never has a single bad thing to say about any of his competitors.
Jeff Gordon is also from California. He's also polished. It's astonishing, but Gordon married a Belgian model and he lives in Manhattan! But there's a difference. Dale Earnhardt embraced the upstart driver, calling him "Wonderboy." To the NASCAR fans, its as if he was the anoited one. If "The Intimidator" liked the kid, well, we like him too.
Besides his squeaky-clean image, fans are also jealous of Johnson's seemingly unstoppable presence on the season each year. So long as he keeps driving, "muh driver" will never win the Sprint Cup. The level of jealousy and resentment against Jimmie Johnson is far greater than the animosity Red Sox fans have for the Yankees. This is serious!
Recently Jimmie Johnson has made an effort to add some chocolate sprinkles and chopped pecans to his ultra-pure vanilla image. He's grown a five-o'clock-shadow. (Of course the cynics have a pool as to when Johnson shaves his beard for a razor or shaving cream commercial.) The problem is, it's a perfectly trimmed, just out of the make-up trailer, Don Johnson five-o'clock shadow, not the grizzled look of his Hendrick's Motorsport team mate, Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
If you know any NASCAR fans who previously turned you down, next summer you might ask them if they want to join you on a picnic one glorious Sunday afternoon. They might just take you up on it.
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