Is NASCAR entertainment or pure sport? That seems to be a question that confounds some fans, who invariably pick one over the other.
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But Kyle Petty says it isn’t just black and white, one way or the other. Rather, Petty firmly said you have to throw a little grey into the mix.
Earlier this week on NASCAR Daily, the former NASCAR Cup driver, current NASCAR TV analyst, and son of legendary NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Petty gave his “hot take” on whether NASCAR is pure sport or entertainment.
To hear Petty say it, the answer is fairly straightforward: you can’t have one without the other!
“So you’re telling me a rivalry is a fight, you’re telling me a rivalry is a scuffle, that’s what you’re telling me,” Petty told NASCAR Daily host Jessie Punch. “You’re telling me you have to have a scuffle, you have to have a fight, you have to have a wreck to have a rivalry.”
“I’m just going to say David Pearson and Richard Petty, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Sr., I can mention a lot of people who never got out and punched each other and (still) had a hell of a rivalry.”
“One thing that tweaks me a little bit is because I try to look at this sport as a sport. You ask about the entertainment value. If you can’t be entertained by the purity of the sport and what the sport is, then maybe you need to find another sport to watch. I’m sorry, you know what I mean?”
“I don’t go to a hockey game to watch the fights, although some people do. And that’s part of the problem with where we’re at now. The media does it, we do it, the racetracks do it. Any time you see an ad for a race, they show wrecks, they show guys pushing, they show guys hitting. That’s an ad to come sit at my racetrack, buy a ticket, and watch my race.”
So even though NASCAR claims to abhor intentional wrecks or physical fighting between drivers or team members, it’s almost forced to use what it rails against just so it can increase at-track attendance or put millions in front of their television sets.
“Any time we make FOX News, any time we make national news, it’s because of a fight or a huge wreck, not the purity of the sport,” Petty said emphatically. “That’s where I’m at in a lot of cases.
“I’m probably in the minority, and I’ll say that as I sit here. We can either be in the entertainment business or be a sport – or balance that place. Right now, everybody wants to talk about entertainment, but we forego the sport when we talk about entertainment.
“There has to be some element of the sport there. We have umpires and referees, we make calls. NASCAR always says it doesn’t want to officiate it on the field, but you’re being forced to officiate it, you’re being forced to step in.
“Don’t feel guilty for it, step in and do something. I don’t think the rivalry thing has anything to do with throwing punches or wrecking people. It has to do with pure competition, running door-to-door and making something happen on the racetrack, running first and second and doing it in a clean way.”
Amen, Brother Kyle, keep preaching to the choir!
