■ 08 November 2009 | 1:47 PM
Brian France 1-on-1 discussing TV commentators, TV coverage, the car, the Chase
I ran into NASCAR Chairman Brian France on Sunday morning before the race and got the chance to sit down with him for 15 minutes alone in the NASCAR hauler discussing some of the various issues that have arisen recently in the sport.
Here's a transcript of what France said to me.
Q: What is your feeling of the comments TV commentators made to me in the Frankly Speaking series and the things were said on the ABC broadcast last weekend at Talladega.
BRIAN FRANCE: Clearly, this is a sport that has a lot of opinions and most other sports channel their thoughts and criticisms differently and that is an unusual thing that we have to have people within the sport openly just criticizing as we go along but maybe that’s something very unique in NASCAR that no other sport has to sort out. We’ll sort it out.’’
Q: Some fans may look at your comment as NASCAR is trying to quiet the commentators and keep them from telling the truth per se, can you clarify your feelings on the subject:
BRIAN FRANCE: “It’s not that way. We fully expect a lot of criticism for any number of reasons, judgment calls that are made, officiating calls that are made and some strategy or policy decisions that are made. We’ve always had that. That’s OK. What I’m saying is in opinions that are under the guise of criticism or being critical that just go on and on and on without much thought that’s different from some policy or rule violation that we didn’t handle correctly, somebody is more than fair to criticize us. It’s just there’s an unprecedented level that occurs when you espouse your opinion about how to do one thing or another.
Q: Were you disappointed with the ABC broadcasters last weekend, their description of the race?
BRIAN FRANCE: I didn’t see it. I really didn’t see all of it.
Q: Did you have any talks with ESPN/ABC officials about last weekend’s race?
BRIAN FRANCE: No, I did not.
Q: Part of because of last week, there’s been a lot of talk about competition. How do you look at competition?
BRIAN FRANCE: I think we’re getting better and I think it’s very good. I think we’ve had some great races at like Loudon and even Dover, places that are not known as having our most exciting races but they were. I think if you look at it on balance, we’re very pleased with the competitive level of things. It’s easy to get off track when you look at how good Jimmie Johnson has been, how dominant he’s been and sort of forget that there’s been lots of hard-fought passing and racing that has gone, but there has. We’re quite pleased with it going into … finishing up in 2009.
Q: Do you get the sense the fans watching on TV are seeing that? Some will say they don’t see all the action. So when you say the competition is really good they might disagree?
BRIAN FRIANCE: “I think what the case is you have certain drivers like Carl Edwards who has not, although he made the Chase, he hasn’t won a race and he was developing his fan base, won so many times and ran up front most of last year, has not done that this year. Dale Jr. obviously has not performed the way he wants to perform. It’s very driver specific. Those two guys represent a lot of fans, especially Dale Jr. If they’re struggling, it’s easy to say the racing is not as good as I think it should be. If my football team is not winning, I would think the league is not having as good of a year too. That’s normal.
Q: Do you feel the drivers are being overly critical and the media are reporting. Let’s be honest, the drivers are the stars. The fans listen to the drivers. A while back you had the meeting with the driver to remind them the impact of their words. Have they forgotten that? Do they need to be reminded?
BRIAN FRANCE: No. We’ve had all kinds of discussions with drivers to realize things that they can say that taken out of context or whatever else. Largely, they’ve been trying to think about that as they’ve gone along. Commentators are the next round that people listen to. They hear them all the time, obviously on the broadcast. That’s sort of been one thing we’ve had our share of that. But you know, we’re going to take all the curveballs that go on and that as I said earlier are unusual in sports but they go with the culture of this sport. You know, the other part is we got really, really boisterous fans who want to share their opinion and go on NASCAR online or go on Sirius radio or any of the shows that you do. They have wide range of opinions and that’s one of the things … those are the opinions I’m looking for.
Q: The fans?
BRIAN FRANCE: “The fans. The rest of them have an opinion that could be misguided. Let’s face they have agendas that go on, people that make up the sport, but our fans just really love the sport other than their own drivers.
Q: How do you correct that? A fan’s opinion could be based off what a commentator or driver says. How do you get your message across. Some people would say that would get into a form of censorship. How would you address that?
BRIAN FRANCE: I said earlier that we welcome criticism on calls that are made, strategy, policy, that goes with the territory. What we’ll ask the commentators to do, they’re professionals and to look at how other professional commentators call other sports. They work with professional networks. They are professionals in their own right. They are professional directors. At some point they have to be professionals and that will be that.
Q: A story in the Washington Post quoted Neal Pilson a TV executive and how he noted that the recession has, in a way, helped NFL ratings soar this year. Certainly NASCAR has been impacted by the economy with fans in the stands. If the NFL’s ratings are going up, why aren’t they doing that for NASCAR? Why is there a difference?
BRIAN FRANCE: Because there’s not one thing. The recession, you can make the case, I would agree with that. I think there’s a sense of community, a sense of people aren’t going out as much. They’re going to focus on something, it’s probably going to be their favorite team. I would agree with that. But if you don’t have storylines and nine other things going your way, then you won’t get all the benefit of that and the NFL has a lot of neat storylines with Brett Favre coming back and lots of parity in their league and they’re doing really well. In our situation, you can’t compare us to any one sport, but, obviously our storylines aren’t what they have been in the past and will be in the future. That’s just the way it goes.
Q: The question has been thrown out that with Jimmie Johnson on the way to an historic fourth title he might actually be hurting the sport. It’s easy to turn off since he’s about to win it. How do you look at that? What do you say to people who say that Jimmie Johnson’s historic run is hurting the sport?
BRIAN FRANCE: “It is historic but we do have a culturally different double-standard that occurs. If this were any other sport, it would be more of a national story than it is. Our media tends to reward various drivers for winning and so on and so forth and close competitive finishes, not necessarily dominant performances. That’s not the case in most coverages of national sports. Those are just cultural things that we have to … over many, many years have to overcome but his run in the record books is historic and we’re real proud of him.
Q: I’m sure a question fans would have is that as we get to the end of the season are you doing to do anything with the car in Cup?
BRIAN FRANCE: No.
Q: I guess the other question is are you going to find a way to de-Johnson-proof the Chase?
BRIAN FRANCE: De-Johnson-proof the Chase (he laughs at that).
Q: Car and Chase, do you foresee anything for next year?
BRIAN FRANCE: Well, we’re going to look at it obviously. We are having our roundtable discussions (with team executives – they just had meetings 2 weeks ago with team members) which came out of our Town Hall meetings in May and so that’s a good process to have for us. To be able to talk directly outside of the race track with everybody in the industry that works on cars and has an interest in it. That’s good. There will be some ideas that will come out to make the racing better. I don’t know what they’ll be. They may not be very large scale.
Q: One last thing, how do you feel about the Chase looking over it’s whole history. Obviously the first year gave you everything you wanted but the margin has grown since. How do you feel about the Chase?
BRIAN FRANCE: No question that we would prefer to have it come down like it did the first year where more than one driver and certainly probably three or four would really have a shot going down the stretch. Jimmie Johnson, we could not have forecasted or predicted how dominant he would be. It’s virtually impossible to do what he’s doing in this format or any format. He is just incredibly dominant and so you can’t change a format because somebody has just been so dominant. You’ll go up against your own creditability when you start doing that. So you have to be, I think, measured in how you respond to wanting to get it like everybody else does. But you know, the Super Bowl doesn’t always get the two best teams. It doesn’t always get the last-minute finish of who is going to win. The World Series doesn’t always get the two best matchups or a seven-game series, which is what they would prefer and on and on it goes. That’s just the nature of ebb and flow of a national sport. We’ll look at that with those kinds of things to think about as we get down the road.’’
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Brian France
Brian France and the France family is exactly what is wrong with nascar. The france family should sell their tracks and run nascar. Let the track owners run the tracks. Let the team owner run the teams. Quit trying to control everything. If nascar doesn't like what a team or a driver does they penalize them. They change the rules midstream. The racing sucks, especially at the 1.5 mile high banked tracks. I went to the Texas race this past weekend and the racing was lousy. I will never go back to texas again unless they bulldoze the track and make it a 3/4 mile flat track.
Green Flag
NASCAR is run by hypocrites. Fans have been complaining for years about the lack consistency for starting times. They never listened because the bucks kept rolling in. As soon as the ratings declined and revenue dropped....wouldn't you know it!! NASCAR discovers what has been obvious for years. With great fanfare they declare "the fans need a consistent green flag time so they can tune in to watch the races". They are they only major sport that changes rules in the middle of the season i.e. single file restarts. Their leadership is killing the sport and I'm closer than ever to "tuning out" and going back to the stick and ball sports.
CHANGING THE RULES
Just out of curosity, let me ask you this: You note midseason rule changes such as the restart rule. Is that not a bad thing? The general impression is that many fans seem to like it and that it has added a level of energy to the races (I recall some folks raving about how it made Pocono more dramatic than they could recall). Imagine if NASCAR had not amended the double-file restart rule until after this season. So, isn't it OK in some cases to change the rules during the season? Major League Baseball added instant replay in the middle of last season. While most sports try to make their rule changes before a season starts, there are times they need to react during a season. Would you not agree? Just curious based on your comment. Thanks.
Atta boy
Nice work, Dustin! Thank you for all you do!
NASCAR is NOT the NFL, Final Part
The comparisons can go on and on and on, but there was a time when it was clearly made obvious to me that NASCAR, even if they didn't believe that they COULD BE a stick and ball sport, tried to emulate those sports. It's clearly impossible folks, so my hope, as a NASCAR fan is that someone sits back, OBJECTIVELY looks at how today is different than the apex of ratings, and start to think about 'dancing with who brung ya'.
My apologies for taking up 3 boxes, but assuming that this is a column that folks at NASCAR will actually read the comments too, if they don't know these things already, I hope they sit back and really think about them.
NASCAR is NOT the NFL, Part 2
2) Local Media in various markets cover LEAGUE SPORTS because they have a reason to. There is no LOCAL TEAM reason for the media in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Miami, etc... outside of their own race weeks
3) Every Stick-and-ball team has it's own unique personality that shines every week. It may be a coach, a player or two, the owners, etc... and they may stick out for lots of different reasons (behavior, outspokenness, brashness, conflict within the team, etc...) but in NASCAR, it's the Driver and Crew Chief... Too few owners control too few teams and there is no obvious rivalry that bubbles up every week like in Stick and Ball sports
Correction...
Aplogies, but as my thoughts flowed, I made one typo... see corrected below:
3) Every Stick-and-ball team has it's own unique personality that shines every week. It may be a coach, a player or two, the owners, etc... and they may stick out for lots of different reasons (behavior, outspokenness, brashness, conflict within the team, etc...) but in NASCAR, it's the Driver and Crew Chief... Too few owners control TOO MANY TEAMS and there is no obvious rivalry that bubbles up every week like in Stick and Ball sports
In this argument, NASCAR is a lot more like GOLF than 'league' teams, so I guess that is a 'stick and ball' sport, but maybe both NASCAR and the PGA are potentially more alike in their challenges than different? After all, aren't ratings really a lot worse on Sundays when Tiger's not in the hunt? Maybe they could get their marketing people together for a symposium on "Overcoming MegaStar Focus".
NASCAR is NOT the NFL
I seem to remember a time when NASCAR gladly touted that they were second only to the NFL in fan popularity... or was it third to NFL and MLB... and it seemed there was a time that NASCAR wanted to be 'just like the NFL'... Now, Mr. France is actually admitting it's not a fair comparison?
"But if you don’t have storylines and nine other things going your way, then you won’t get all the benefit of that and the NFL has a lot of neat storylines with Brett Favre coming back and lots of parity in their league and they’re doing really well. In our situation, you can’t compare us to any one sport"
OK... There was a time a few years ago when people well connected with the sport told me that 'we need to compete with Stick and Ball Sports'. Well, here's what NASCAR needs to realize (and maybe what Brian is actually starting to acknowledge)... IT IS NOT A STICK AND BALL SPORT and NEVER WILL BE! Here's why:
1) Stick and Ball sports have teams in 25 to 35 different markets that people IN THAT MARKET tend to care about, NASCAR has 50 different teams with the masses caring about maybe 3, a few caring about 6 more and relatively few caring about the rest.
2) Local Media i
TIVO
Can we get Brian France a Tivo/DVR so he can at least watch and analyze the broadcast booth the next day, sheesh.
France comments
Perfectly said by jmmountain. Expect nothing to change at NASCAR when the man in charge doesn't see or won't admit there's a problem.
I didn't watch much of the race today be were Rusty and Dale there or have they been put in the corner?
He's so caught up in making excuses for the mess the chase created, the COT created and the micro managing Mike Helton has done the he's totally
lost touch with what the fans want to see.