NASCAR as 'Our national past-time'?

[wvrevy]

I notice that a number of people have mentioned football as both college and NFL. Yet nobody has mentioned baseball from little league to legion ball to college to Cape league to minor leagues to major leagues.

I've been to two high school football games in the last couple years with over 10,000 in attendance...and this in a state where the largest high school doesn't come near that kind of enrollment. In states like Texas and Florida, that isn't even notable, as they draw that kind of crowd all the time. The high school state championship in the biggest division draws five or six thousand on a regular basis (and more depending on how well the schools involved travel to support their team).

Kids don't play football? I can't begin to tell you how many kids I've seen passing a football around on fall evenings and every fall weekend. From 5 to 50, they all come out for the Mountaineer games and toss the pigskin around in the parking lot before and after the game. Personally, I started playing organized football at the age of 7, and didn't stop until the rest of my classmates completely outgrew me in high school. I was always pretty good at baseball, and even toyed with playing in college, but football was always my passion.

Football just has it all over baseball (and certainly Nascar) in terms of passionate fans, an enjoyable game, and the number of fans. Given the opportunity to attend any event they could choose, I would be willing to bet that the majority of people in the country would name some football game (the Super Bowl, their favorite college team in a championship game, etc.) over either a race or any baseball game.

JMHO...

 

[TSR6]

Football is king. Sure, on any given Sunday there are 100,000+ attending a race. But on any given Saturday in the fall, college football stadiums from coast to coast fill up with millions of fans.

Any given Wednesday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday - thousands of race tracks around the US and Canada are filled with hundreds, or thousands of people. Many, if not most of the paved tracks are NASCAR sanctioned tracks. Nascar does not stop at the TV Broadcast level, but also on the local weekly racing series - which don't JUST race on the weekends!

 

[TSR6]

If you're talking about arrests among NASCAR drivers you can hardly compare it to the entire NFL or MLB. There is a drastic difference in numbers. The number of big-time NASCAR drivers is roughly equal to the number of players on ONE NFL TEAM. Throw in the Busch series and trucks and you still only have a number equal to three or four NFL teams.

As in any sport, some NASCAR folks are wholesome, and some aren't. As someone who lives very near a superspeedway, I can tell you that there will be a lot of drunks here this weekend. Some of them will be driving and a bunch of them will arrested. And I'm talking about fans, not players.

I think baseball is still the "national" pasttime although it wouldn't be number 1 here. There are so many more teams and games, plus, as Melcald said, we can also play it. I'm not sure NASCAR is even the biggest thing in NASCAR country. Most of the people I know put either college basketball or NFL before NASCAR. For many of us, NASCAR is just an economic engine that creates jobs.

NASCAR has a VERY strict drug abuse policy for both the drivers and the crew members. If they get caught, they can't race until they are clean. If they are caught again, they forever lose their NASCAR licence. That has only happened to one driver that I know of.... and yes, they do drug test quite a bit.

 

[gris gris]

Does it seem to anyone else that these responses are regional??? Up here in the Northeast we don't see football being played by young kids as much as we see Little Leauge/baseball. Also as TSR6 said, there's a whole lot of local racing going on during the week and on Saturday nights.

I was on a business trip in Texas once, we were driving down a 4 lane route (2 lanes on each side). On the other side there was a high school, and hundreds of cars. It was a Tuesday or Wednesday night. We had no idea what was going on there but figured it was a big game. At work the next day, we asked what it was all about, and they told us it was football practice. A high school practice game. CRAZY! I don't think you'd ever see that up here for football.

 

[jimmiej]

mom, apple pie, the flag, & baseball

 

[Galahad]

For many of us, NASCAR is just an economic engine that creates jobs.

Here in Indy it's similar with Open Wheel racing. Lots and Lots of companies and jobs in Indy come from Indy Cars, the old CART style racing and Formula 1. A surprising number of jobs really.

 

[Captain Brain]

I will always love watching baseball. However, I hate playing it.