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MAKES RULE CHANGE,
BY JAMES HARLEY
In a tim e where football and basketball
dominate ESPN’s SportsCenter highlights, sports
that used to find themselves near the top are trying
to crawl back up in search of a larger fail base.
Baseball, which recently lost to football in a poll as
America’s biggest pastime, brought new changes to
the game as the MLB announced an implementatipn of
rules to try and speed up games. These announcements
brought a fairly negative outcry from hardcore baseball,
fans. However, there is another sport taking even more
criticism for even bigger changes to its format.
NASCAR announced changes over its offseason, which
added stages to each NASCAR race. Every race will now
have three stages^ and winners of the first two stages will
get 10 bonus points that add into the playoffs at the end
of the season. In the last stage, drivers race to determine
who the winner is, like normal. Winners of the race still
get 40 points, as it was last season^ and hoist the trophy
in victory lane.
The changes, among several others, come to try and
improve the excitement on the track, at a time where
NASCAR struggles to sell out it s seats in the stands.
.
Steve O ’Donnell, NASCAR’s chief of racing, told Fox
Sports that these changes come from what he’s heard
‘‘loud and clear from the fansun Twitter.”
W ith reports of NASCAR considering reducing
the noise of racecars on the track for next season,
some longtime fans are beginning to turn away
from the sport, frustrated with the direction it
is going in its attempt to gain new viewers.
‘‘You have lost another fan dye to
your changes,” saidJ.R . Huntley in a
top-liked comment on NASCAR’s
Facebook post. “ Stage racing or
segment racing has taken
away how NASCAR was
developed.”
. S Clackamas Print MARCH 15,2017 thedackamasprintcom
H u n tley is n ’ t
the only one who has
turned his head away from
the sport. In ¿002, NASCAR
had some of its best ratings in its
history. According to Jayski, a website
partnered with ESPN that has displayed
N ASCAR ratings since 2001, the 2002,1
Daytona 500 had about 35 million viewers,
while last year’ s Daytona 500 had just about
11.4 million viewers. This stat simply shows a
downward trend that NASCAR has seen over the
last few years that could be related to a number a
things, but it really strongly points to one trend in
particular, which is the shrinking fan base.
Longtime fans have a point. If anyone were to look back
to that 2003 season, it would be almost unrecognizable
compared to today. Thete was no championship playoff
or “ chase,” which was added in 2004 and heavily modified
after the 2013 season to essentially what it is now. There
were also no stages, and points were structured much
differently than they are now.
NASCAR is taking a huge risk. Whether it was the economic
decline, lack of promotion, or just simply fans leaving the
sport in disgust, NASCAR is committed to finding a way to
bring people back and find new people to get interested. Yet,
there is still a guarantee that NASCAR fans like me will have
a hard time watching a seemingly artificial excitement.
Watching NASCAR adding new rules each season is like
watching someone trying to fix something that isn’t
broken. The best thing NASCAR can do at this point
to catch back up to the NFL in views is to go fa ck to
its roots, back to when the stands were full and the
racing was at its best.
With the latest ratings for this year’s Daytona
500 showing little improvement compared to last >
year’ s race, it tells us that there is still much to
do to bring back fans. In an era where Dale Jr.,
NASCAR’s most popular driver since 2002,
is already talking retirement, I just hope
that NASCARmakes the right movesto
connect the sport back to its roots
with the fans and racing.