What Happened to the People's NASCAR?

Like the immense popularity of Elvis, the Beatles, and aliens, NASCAR's lure has certainly faded with time.

When the superstar of the sport tragically perished in the first race of the 2001 season, everyone wondered if the sport could survive. The difference between surviving and thriving seems to be what NASCAR is experiencing now.

Long gone are the days when the drivers were almost regular people. If you were lucky enough to live near a driver, as I grew up near the Alabama Gang, you might run into Bobby, Donnie, Red, or Neil at the grocery store or at a local restaurant.

They would chat like normal people, test-drive stock cars on back streets, and make major car modifications in the backyard garage.

Some of NASCAR's biggest innovations were made in home garages, where mortgages were paid off from top finishes at a local track, not from winning a career's worth of money in two races.

These icons were at your local Wal-mart the weekend before a big race. You could chat, have a photo made with them, and talk shop.

The hustlers of the tracks, Cale, Lee, Richard, Bobby, Darrell, and Dale were the innovators. They ran on adrenaline, sweat, and borrowed money to pave the way to stardom.

NASCAR was about taking chances, taking a stock car, and fine-tuning it to get impossible performance from it.

I remember Bobby Allison winning Talladega in the early eighties, on TV with a black eye, caused from a confrontation in the pits at Birmingham International Raceway after Clifford was wrecked on the Saturday night before. That was passion.

I knew Davey when he was the track champion at BIR before ever piloting the Havoline 28 for Richard Yates. Even after making it as a driver, we still bowled with him and his wife once a month or so.

Davey loved being recognized and would sign anything and chat with any adoring fan. His untimely death was a blow for the sport as a whole. Until he moved from Hueytown, Ala., in the mid-'90s, Bobby Allison was in the phone book.

Jim McKay and Wide World of Sports helped make the sport a common man's game. NASCAR appealed to the regular guy. It was his sport, sponsored by beer and cigarettes. The "redneck throwbacks" Tony Stewart so lovingly referred to.

Once upon a time, NASCAR was actually fun to watch. There is nothing like seeing 43 cars cover a cool 100 yards a second. Wondering who would do what to win. That was then.

NASCAR has become an empire. A dictatorship. Drivers are punished for emotional outbursts. Allowing emotion to show is now taboo. Sadly enough, you can't say what's on your mind. That's a trip to the trailer and probation for a few races.

The drivers are cookie cutters who all look alike, talk alike, and get mad for being cut off in traffic. NASCAR encourages cross drivers, famous in one racing division, to cross over. Men with names pronounced one way and spelled another.

Not one has made the impact of a farm boy from Georgia, a steelworker from Alabama, or a mill worker from North Carolina. Most are good for a wreck a race (hello Carpentier, R.Gordon, Montoya), and have never and will never be NASCAR Champion.

The "Wal-mart teams," usually with 3-5 cars in the stable, are unfairly able to share testing results with each other, knocking the owner/driver teams out of business.

NASCAR is about as fun as watching paint dry. No one driver can constantly stand out, be a threat, or be personable for any length at a time.

Competition pit stops? Please. In the 1978's-1980's you only had to watch a race or two and you had a favorite. You could watch for one to two years and never feel like you knew who your driver is nowadays.

Cookie cutter drivers, cars, emotions, reflexes, and abilities do not translate to excitement.

After Dale, NASCAR is still a profitable machine, but did it survive? Questionable. Very questionable.