Hello race fans, well, with all of the tragedy that has been going on this year in racing, I haven't really had a chance to be pissed off enough to write an article like this....until now. I'm sure many of you saw the Homestead race weekend brought to you by the "moguls" of sports coverage, NBC. You know, the NBA Finals station, the Notre Dame channel, and of course the home of the Olympics. Fans, what can I tell you....well, I can sum it up in two words first, then go from there. They suck. Honestly, I didn't have a chance to see much of the Busch race because some of us have to work weekends, but what I did see kind of suprised me. Alan Bestwick, MRN announcer, and basically a very well known race personality was commentating with Joe Gibbs, the coach and leader of the best team in Winston Cup at the moment. Their "driver expert" commentator for the race was Mike Wallace. With all due respect, this is not a very field tested or talented group, with the exception of Bestwick. The Busch race, does not normally use their "best group" of color commentators for some reason, so this wasn't too bad. Now then, lets fast forward to my day off last week, Sunday, The Inaugural Homestead 400. Granted, the race itself wasn't the most exciting race to watch. But when NBC, giants of the sports world, decided to break from the race and go to their "Main Guy" hell, I can't remember his name. It's the guy they break to when they're covering golf and things like that. NBC decided that they would run a 5 or 10 minute tribute to Robert Yates, ended by a good 10 more minutes of commercials. All of my personal feelings towards Robert Yates put aside, this was probably the worst thing NBC could have done. Why, in the middle of a race, would you stop covering the action, what the fans pay their cable bills to see, and do a tribute to anyone?? In the Olympics, football games, NBA and especially golf, there is alot of down time in the action where little tributes and things can be run and no one really cares, in fact, they are typically more entertaining than the sport that they are covering. This is directed to the NBC Sports suits that may read this, NASCAR has NO down time. Kind of like soccer, the action starts and when it's over, then they run tributes and commercials. If NBC wanted to spend their money and cover NASCAR events, which in two years, they will be bringing you the NASCAR season along with FOX Sports, they needed to quite simply make it better. Get some real commentators first. Don't have a man that owns two teams racing in the race he's covering and spend all the time interviewing him about the teams. Don't have an "expert driver" that is the farthest thing from an expert, who has two brothers in the race, and the only reason he's commentating is because he didn't qualify for the race and didn't have the cab fare to get home. Then, for crying out loud, don't break from the action. If you are "proud as a peacock" to cover NASCAR, then act like it. If you want to cover NASCAR, do it better than ESPN and TNN. Have commercial free race coverage where companies who sponser races can run their ad by sponsering the leader board, kind of like soccer games. You know what I mean race fans, just do something different and prove that you deserve to cover NASCAR. If you have all the video coverage and want to do a tribute to a driver or owner, put it at the beginning or the end of a race where it is more appreciated. Ok ok...now I will get off my soapbox, but let me leave you with one more thought. I did call this article NBC...a report card. When I e-mailed NBC Sports and complained, I told them, in my never to be humbled opinion, that their grade was d-. The more I think about it...I was wrong. They earned every bit of an
