Surrender

I give up… at least on the NASCAR Nationwide Series on ESPN. I tune in for the race and get a 40-minute pre-race show. I’m really starting to miss NBC’s old Busch Series coverage. You tuned into their broadcast and you got the last bars of the Star Spangled Banner, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” and a “Hi folks, we’re ready to go racin’,” within the first five minutes.

Thank goodness they got in all that Danica coverage in the pre-race. On Turn 1 of the first lap, four other drivers dodge a spinning car. Danica Patrick runs straight into him. Her day is done… once again… of course it wasn’t her fault this time… or any of the other times she’s gotten in a wreck. Not once. Just amazingly unlucky. I was afraid ESPN was going to cancel their broadcast right then and there. “Sorry folks, but the race is functionally over for us. We don’t have enough material on the other 42 drivers in the race to pad this out. You can still get live tracking and scoring via Race Buddy, if you still care who wins, which we don’t. We return you to local programming, likely a series of info-mercials.”

Who can tell the difference? Predictably, two minutes after Danica’s crash, the network goes to commercial. Even more predictably, I start flipping stations and inevitably find something more interesting than a commercial. Five minutes later, I flip back and they’re either back in commercial or the race is under caution. I start flipping around again. Repeat for the next two and a half-hours. Pity. The race actually looked pretty good, although it was somewhat credibility straining, as ESPN’s in-race advertising specialist, Carl Edwards, won the race. Was the win due to his superior talent, better equipment, or cunning strategy? No, I’m pretty sure it was that Subway fresh sandwich he had waiting for him at the finish line that drove him to victory. Subway: Eat Fresh.

This is actually the first time I am going to have to say that having an ESPN employee win a race that they’re covering, does look bad. It was likely all of the extra sponsorship mentions that Carl got in that really highlighted it. ESPN may have even cut to a Subway commercial after every time they talked to him. I wouldn’t know. As mentioned, I was flipping stations. It’s a biting commentary that even a good race can’t hold my attention through bad broadcasting.