With all of the bad publicity it’s been getting, football is endangered on the American university campus. Though it seems impossible that the sport might, at some schools, be discontinued or cut back, the prudent university president and board of trustees might want to do some thinking about contingencies.
In light of the strong national and international coverage the latest massive NASCAR brawl involving Jeff Gordon, Brad Keselowski, and their crews has been getting, it’s time to consider replacing football at our universities with the largest spectator sport in America. Here are some of NASCAR’s advantages over football.
1. It has much more of the violence that students at big football schools demand, but because the sport is so openly and variously violent (crashes, fights on the track, fights in the pit, fights in the audience, cars crashing into spectators, cars exploding, drivers killed), the violence tends to stay at the venue site rather than spilling out into adjacent neighborhoods. There’s a principle of containment at work at NASCAR events, with the event set up in such a way as to honor and satisfy the demand for violence, so universities can expect a welcome reduction in post-game student rioting.
2. Unlike football, NASCAR is already an academic field at several universities. Auburn not only graduates many NASCAR engineers, but has such close ties to the sport that an Auburn-emblazoned NASCAR vehicle is active on the circuit. The University of North Carolina, much in the news lately for its football program, boasts that its “NC Motorsports and Automotive Research Center … is located in the heart of NASCAR country and is the first stop for employers hiring interns and entry level engineers. We’re within 50 miles of 90% of the NASCAR Sprint Cup teams and 5 miles from Charlotte Motor Speedway, just past the checkered flag.”
3. By sponsoring professional university teams rather than attempting the ill-fated student-athlete route, universities will not only avoid NCAA-entanglement, but will be free to use the entire torso plus limbs of their players for school and corporate advertising. It’s hard to think of a more iconic American image than that of Gordon immediately post-brawl, bleeding from the lip and displaying on his arms and chest ads for Bosch, Siemens, Pepsi, Panasonic, and Champion. Around Gordon’s collar, onto which blood dripped, was an ad for the American Association of Retired Persons.
4. NASCAR is a very human contest, without the anonymous armored-gladiator feel of post-concussion era football. Students can see racers’ faces and watch their flesh bleed freely. In all ways, NASCAR is a closer, more sensory experience than distant sanitized high-tech football. There’s the smell of fuel, the smoking wheels, the splash of water in the pit, the shrieking cries of downed drivers. Student attendance at university football games has been drastically down lately, and there has been much anxious speculation as to why; but if you simply put the game up against NASCAR the answer is obvious.
Compared to NASCAR, football is boring.
November 11th, 2014 at 10:06AM
It seems to me (channeling the late Stephen Jay Gould) that CFB and NASCAR have long been in a process of convergent evolution similar to the one that has made sliced ham and deli turkey almost indistinguishable. They’re both violent big-time sports largely confined to the southeast, but with national TV exposure; live audiences travel long distances to attend and tailgate in the parking lots; etc., etc.
November 11th, 2014 at 10:08AM
Mr Punch: Precisely. The shared tailgating trait is particularly noteworthy.