In the days leading up to the Winternationals, NHRA, in conjunction with ESPN, announced that all of this year’s telecasts, including the anthology program, nhra2day, would appear exclusively on espn2, ESPN’s little brother.  When this move was correctly seen by the media as a further slap in the face to drag racing, NHRA went into full spin mode.

During a pre-race press conference NHRA president Tom Compton expressed pleasure at the move to espn2, saying that "that’s where we wanted to be."  Media director Jerry Archambeault later explained that the household reach of espn2 is very close to that of ESPN, which no one is arguing.  

The "problem" is that every newspaper sports writer in the country, along with a pretty fair number of corporate marketing managers, knows that despite their respective household counts, ESPN is clearly the premier network, while espn2 is just as obviously considered by ESPN and their parent company, Disney, to be the secondary outlet. 

Evidence for this abounds.  During college football season, for example, one might find Auburn playing Alabama on ESPN while East Carolina is playing Appalachian State on "The Deuce," as it’s known.  I mean no insult to those appearing on espn2, but the more high profile schools draw stronger ratings and commensurate advertising revenues, as has historically been the case.

The college bowl season produced some interesting comparisons between ESPN and The Deuce in terms of both programming and ratings.  The Holiday Bowl featuring Cal and Texas Tech pulled a 4.0 on ESPN, while the Emerald Bowl featuring Navy and New Mexico that ran opposite it on espn2 produced a rating of exactly half that.

NHRA’s Archambeault tried to keep the spin going by telling anyone who would listen that ESPN was going to promote the races during "Sports Center" telecasts, but to date the often tongue-in-cheek talking heads who host the show haven’t gotten the word.  Drag racing apparently remains on their "Do Not Mention" lists.

The NHRA places great store in the "numbers" that appear on the pages of Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal, but they won’t like the publication’s recent comparison between ESPN and espn2, which further indicated the very real differences between the two networks.  While ESPN’s average 24-hour viewership was 673,000, The Deuce was only attracting 227,000 watchers.  The average prime time audience for ESPN was a relatively strong 1,405,000, with espn2 trailing badly with only 478,000 viewers.  In terms of ratings the same significant differences emerged, with espn2’s .6 trailing ESPN by a full point (1.6).

Despite their efforts to turn the move to espn2 into a positive, negative reaction was swift and pointed.  The day after his press conference appearance Compton was taken to task in an editorial in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin under Louis Brewster’s name.  The Bulletin has a large LA basin-area circulation, with Brewster being a widely respected writer familiar with many forms of racing, yet insiders at NHRA adopted their usual stance in the face of his criticism in the hopes that their derisive stance would blunt both his credibility and the body-blow editorial. 

It didn’t work because Brewster wasn’t alone in his complaints.  Several prominent members of the sponsorship community also expressed their concerns about the TV situation, but that wasn’t the only disturbing news to come out of NHRA since the season began.

Unlike every other major sanctioning body in North American motorsports, NHRA is determined to institute a photo licensing program, reportedly in an effort to "control" the use of images taken at POWERade Series events.  I realize this is of little concern to most of you reading this, but it should be if for no other reason than it’s a further indication that drag racing’s largest sanctioning organization continues to be, for all of its positive points, completely out of touch in many important areas.

Without going into a great deal of detail, NHRA has assured many that any company presently involved with the sport would have no trouble getting "permission" to use images in almost any way they’d like, with the only exception possibly being some sort of for-profit venture.  In other words, the use of photos in advertising or giveaway calendars or hero cards would be no problem, but if that same company wanted to sell, say, coffee mugs with an image of their driver in action at a national event, that might result in NHRA charging an as yet unspecified fee. 

Of course, photos taken during test sessions or any other non-NHRA national event may be used carte blanche, which would seem to put the whole licensing issue to rest, but the reality is that far more usable images come from the actual races than from test sessions or match races.

While you’re wondering what the problem is, others have jumped ahead in foreseeing eventualities like Pepsi wanting to run a print or even broadcast ad featuring Del Worsham’s team, which, through its affiliation with the Checkers, Schucks, Kragen Auto Parts operation, already has a relationship of sorts with the team.  That scenario, NHRA has acknowledged, could and probably would result in some sort of licensing arrangement and fee.

The point NHRA not only fails to recognize, but won’t even address is that many companies, faced with a licensing agreement, will simply walk away rather than deal with it head-on.  From their perspective, the ad they’re considering featuring a drag racing image may be of little importance, and faced with any kind of roadblock they’ll simply go in another direction.  Something along these lines has already taken place.  A major corporation reportedly sought permission from NHRA to use photography in an important promotional tool, but faced with difficulties in obtaining credentials for their photographer as well as being given stringent guidelines under which the photos could be used as well as reportedly being told they’d have to provide a significant liability policy for their photographer, they changed their plans.  They’ll go ahead with their promotional tool, replacing the areas where drag racing was to have been included with images from another motorsports series.

Torco’s Competitionplus.com has also learned from an unimpeachable source that one major sponsor sent NHRA a FedEx letter asking for a copy of the photo guidelines in early March, stating unequivocally that the company wouldn’t run a single drag racing-related image in any advertising or promotional materials until their legal department had "read the rules."  As of our deadline the company had yet to receive a response, either verbally or in writing, and they’ve stuck to their guns, halting all of their national advertising featuring drag racing.

When something like that happens every fan, participant and sponsor of the sport suffers because a national advertising campaign featuring drag racing is a positive in every sense of the word.  An ad featuring a fire-breathing Funny Car that appears on the pages of Playboy, Sports Illustrated and other publications has the potential to lure more fans and more sponsors into the sport.  Instead, NHRA would prefer to be remunerated for providing access to the track rather than looking forward to enhancing the sport’s image to millions of non-traditional fans, that very same group of people NHRA continually says they’re trying to influence.

Here’s an example of how NHRA POWERade and the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series benefits from the use of any drag racing image in national advertising.  Last year B.F. Goodrich, which is not a "player" in "regular" NHRA drag racing but plays a prominent role in the various Street Legal series, ran a national print ad featuring a wheelstanding Mustang with a prominent BFG windshield banner.  The photo, taken at Englishtown, shows the car wheelstanding just above a Lucas Oil sign.  In actuality, the B.F. Goodrich ad probably produced more audience impressions for Lucas Oil than any of their own advertising efforts, as they certainly weren’t buying space in the kind of major enthusiast publications that the ad appeared in.  Further, even though one NHRA official told this writer that he had a "problem" with the Goodrich ad because they weren’t a major sponsor (he apparently hadn’t looked at the ad closely enough to discern when and where the photo was taken), he also failed to recognize the very real ancillary benefits the ad brought to drag racing in general.

Twice in recent weeks the issue of NHRA being alone among racing organizations in trying to license the use of photography was brought up to senior officials, and in both instances they simply didn’t respond to the pointed questions aimed in their direction.  They didn’t provide any reasoning behind their decision-making; they simply ignored the questions and moved smoothly on as if nothing had been said.

Just as with the television situation outlined above, the NHRA will undoubtedly continue to try and turn these very real negatives into positives, but when things get this sticky they simply won’t turn at all.

CATCHING UP:  Since our story about Mike Edwards appeared in last month’s Up Front the Oklahoma racer and his peer group have had a series of on-going minor skirmishes with various NHRA officials.  Even before our piece appeared Edwards had received almost unanimous support from his fellow racers, with many of them individually confronting officials to ask why the driver with the illegally modified rear wheel wells had gone unpunished while Edwards had been embarrassed before his fans and sponsor. 

More pointedly, they also wanted to know why the car with the modified wheel wells had been allowed to keep racing at Pomona after the illegalities had been discovered.  The answers they received were just as nebulous as those we got.  One driver walked around with a pocketful of 2 gram nuts which he individually tossed at various tech people, asking as he’d hit them, "Did that hurt?  Did it do me any good to toss it at you, ‘cause you didn’t even feel it, did’ja?  Think Edwards gained from those wrist pins being too light by 2 grams?  Of course he didn’t!"

During his pre-race engine teardown in Phoenix Edwards asked the inspectors if their scales had been certified.  The following is an approximation of that conversation:

INSPECTOR:  Certified?

EDWARDS:  Yeah, you know.  Checked by an outside, third party and certified as weighing accurately.

INSPECTOR:  I dunno know anything about that stuff.  I only know this is the scale we’re using!

More than one Pro Stock racer told Torco’s Competitionplus.com that they can carefully set up their gram scales in the back of their transporter, zero them out and level them as accurately as possible, and then do nothing more than walk the length of the transporter, hop out on the ground, step back in and walk to the scales only to find them reading anywhere from 3 to 8 grams differently than before.

With the unintentional abuse all of NHRA’s testing equipment undergoes while on the road it would be in the organization’s best interests to have every bit of that hardware certified prior to any testing, weighing or measuring – at every national event.  In that way anything untoward discovered during an inspection might be better received by the competitors than it is now.

Finally, in conversation with Edwards, engine builder Frank Iaconio and representatives of Edwards’ sponsor, a senior NHRA official was asked why the organization hadn’t phoned Edwards prior to "going public" with their accusations following the Winternationals.  The official responded by saying they’d called Edwards shop several times, but he’d failed to return those calls.  The official then reportedly turned to Iaconio and said "We also called your shop several times, but you didn’t call back either."

The official was less than pleased when Iaconio responded by saying, "Uh, I hate to tell you this, but we don’t have an answering machine at our shop!"

Iaconio then followed up by asking a straight forward technical question, one the official apparently couldn’t answer.  Rather than suggesting he’d find out the answer, he threw up his hands in disgust, walked out of the trailer, and hasn’t been in touch with either Edwards or Iaconio since.   

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