ESPN/NHRA drop the ball again!

[Lew Silverman]

I had a chance to watch both the NHRA Full Throttle and Lucas Oil Sportsman coverage on ESPN this past weekend. No real surprises here, you either like the format/coverage or you don't. It's the only "game" on basic cable!

Two things that happened DID kind of bother me, and I felt the need to vent, so here goes -

During the hour-long coverage of the TAD/TAFC racing at Pomona an interview was conducted with Mr. Forrest Lucas, a man who I have great admiration and respect for. The gist of the interview was that Sportsman racing was very important because it was the "backbone of racing" and most of the Pro's started as Sportsman racers. I got the feeling from watching the interview that Mr. Lucas is very passionate about his love of Sportsman drag racing! I just wish his concern for the Sportsman racer equated into more coverage because at the end of the program they only showed about 45 seconds of the Class finals held on Monday. (More airtime was afforded the NHRA Jr. Dragster program!)

Then during the sign-off, I heard Dave Reiff and Bob Frey say that the next show would be in March from the Gator's. I thought for a second and realized, HEY, they're not running TAD/TAFC at Phoenix, so no Lucas Oil show next week! And that's when I got mad!

Here is a PERFECT opportunity to provide a national platform for the REAL "backbone of drag racing", and they're not taking advantage of it! One hour of air-time during the year when it would be possible to high-light the other classes of Sportsman drag racing, instead of the maybe 25 minutes we'll get ALL YEAR! How much more expensive would one more show be? The advertising and promotion capabilities remain the same, we just focus on the much larger number of Sportsman racers who compete at NHRA National as well as Divisional events. Here was a PERFECT opportunity to introduce Sportsman Class drag racing to a national audience. They could have explained all the different classes, handicap starts and the other unique things about Sportsman Class racing. Is it so hard to believe that enough interest would be generated to make a program like this feasible? Lucas Oil is still the sponsor and benefactor for this production, which is why they still have their syndicated "On the Edge" programming featuring "little-guy" drag racing every so often.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

(The above comments are my opinion only and are not meant to demean or insult anyone)