Commentary: NASCAR blushing over Junior’s curse
Much of America still needs an interpreter to wade through the interviews at NASCAR races. They’re so packed with technical talk, car numbers, jargon, good ol’ boyisms and corporate plugs that by the end, the casual fan’s head is spinning faster than those sacrificial bozos who get knocked out midway through the races.
That sure wasn’t a problem Sunday at the Talladega Superspeedway.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. stepped out of his car after winning at the fabled Alabama track for the fifth time, and when asked about its significance, he fumbled trying to honor the man who taught him the business. That was before Dale Earnhardt was killed in a last-lap crash at another fabled superspeedway almost four years ago.
“It don’t mean (blank) right now,” Junior told NBC Sports during a live broadcast from Talladega. “Daddy’s won here 10 times.”
Talk doesn’t get much plainer than that.
But Tuesday, it got more expensive.
NASCAR’s bosses fined Earnhardt $10,000, enough to remind him that cursing is bad. He already knew that. Earnhardt was flat-out joyful in the winner’s circle, but deflated by the time he sat down in the interview room a few moments later. That’s because he knew NASCAR wasn’t going to stop at his wallet.
True to form, those officials also docked Earnhardt 25 points in the Nextel Cup standings — enough to drop him into second place in the series, and more than enough to decide the championship with seven races left. If you want to hear some foul language, just listen to what follows if he comes up the same number of points short of the championship at series end.
There’s no defending what Earnhardt said, and on the other hand, plenty of precedents for what NASCAR did.
NASCAR chief Mike Helton warned drivers in February to watch their language on radio and TV, and over the next four months, he fined and erased the same 25 points from the ledgers of Busch Series drivers Johnny Sauter and Ron Hornaday Jr. for cursing on-air during radio interviews in Las Vegas and Dover, Del.
The shame is that no one at NASCAR headquarters took the fine money and flew to New York to make sure NBC used a five-second delay on its racing telecasts. That would have stopped bad precedent from becoming an even worse law. If this catches on — if every foul-mouthed remark by an athlete over the years found its way onto the air or into print, and wound up costing them wins instead of money — there would still be plenty of swearing, only most of it would be about the hundreds of trophies changing hands.
Stepping off a football field with fresh bruises and separated from your senses, then stepping in front of a microphone to say anything coherent is tough enough. It’s one reason why “Monday Night Football” put a delay in its broadcasts this season. The other reason is that after Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl, the FCC hit CBS with a $550,000 fine.
That sum was enough to make some people look ahead. As is often the case, NASCAR remained stuck in the past.
They’re still selling drivers risking their lives every weekend as a “family sport” and pretending to be surprised when those drivers can’t shut the adrenaline flow off the second they climb out of their cars.