Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
If there's one thing we've learned from the cable news business during the past decade or so it's that sex sells and frightening auto racing crashes keep us from going to the refrigerator after somebody reads the NFL scores off a teleprompter.
If Walter Cronkite was still in his prime and looking for a job, he would have to take a number in the interview room at Fox News behind three bubble-headed bleach blondes with plunging necklines.
As the great man himself used to say, that's the way it is.
And despite NASCAR's fairly successful attempt at shoving its left-hand turns and good ol' boy mentality down the exhaust pipe of mainstream America, the way it is in other forms of motor sport, at least when it comes to TV news, is that a racecar exploding into a ball of flame is still way more interesting than two or three racing side-by-side to the checkered flag.
Especially on opening day of the NFL season.
Give the Indy Racing League credit. By asking for a volunteer to crash and burn during last week's race in Chicago, at least it managed to squeeze its way onto SportsCenter for about 10 seconds Sunday night after ESPN devoted about 15 minutes to the Redskins' riveting 9-7 victory against the Bears.
Catering to the prurient interests of its viewers, ESPN nearly outdid itself this time. It even came up with a graphic to promote the fiery crash in which rookie driver Ryan Briscoe's car was launched into the air and ripped a giant hole in the catch fence, leaving enough debris in its wake to suggest a hurricane had just roared out of turn 4.
Washington's Clinton Portis was picking up three yards on an off-tackle play (or maybe it was Terrell Owens dissing somebody) when the graphic flashed on screen: COMING UP: HORRIFIC INDY CAR CRASH.
I don't recall watching the lead-in to SportsCenter the night Lawrence Taylor twisted Joe Theismann's leg into the shape of a pretzel. But I doubt that ESPN used a graphic that said "COMING UP: GRISLY NFL INJURY." In fact, if memory serves correctly, I recall the anchors warning viewers about the nature of Theismann's injury before showing the replay.
There was no such warning before Briscoe's crash. After all, he was just carried out on a gurney with two broken collarbones.
Should the networks ignore spectacular crashes? Of course not. They are part and parcel of the sport. But so are close finishes, and race fans say it would be nice to see those get mentioned a little more often.
"We were talking about that on the way over," said Las Vegas resident Paul Tracy, who will be making 200-mph left-hand turns at next weekend's Champ Car race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, as we waited for breakfast at Arizona Charlie's at The Lakes on Wednesday. "I guess it's OK, as long as nobody gets killed."
Tracy, who, surprise, doesn't have a death wish, was only being facetious.
But in reality, it's only OK as long as somebody named Dale Earnhardt, or one of the other stock car racing icons, doesn't get killed. When that happens, even the talking heads get upset and demand an investigation.
"If they had those kind of accidents ... cars flying through the air ... in NASCAR, the media wouldn't stand for it," said Tracy, the 2003 Champ Car champion. "Can you imagine if in one season Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson had broken backs, broken legs (as a result of) fiery crashes?"
But Tracy's biggest beef is not with the media for glorifying spectacular accidents, but with the sanctioning bodies for not doing more to eliminate them. That's part of the reason that when most of the sport's big-name drivers jumped with their teams to the rival IRL, Tracy remained in Champ Car, which runs mostly on road and street circuits at slower speeds.
He believes open-wheel cars, which don't have fenders, were not meant to race wheel-to-wheel at literal breakneck speed.
He said he really doesn't have any desire to return to the Indy 500, either, not after what happened to Bruno Junqueira, one his chief Champ Car rivals, in this year's race.
Junqueira suffered a broken back and other serious injuries when a slower car touched wheels with his, sending it hurtling into the concrete wall.
"It seems like they have two or three of them a year where guys get hurt in huge (expletive) crashes," said the outspoken Tracy. "Look at Bruno. He's got a broken back and 14-inch rods in his spine that are going to stay there forever."
Not that that matters to SportsCenter. Or most sports fans who watch it.
But at least there was a positive note to Ryan Briscoe's film at 11, and every other hour it was replayed. For the few seconds his car was on fire, Danica Patrick's finishing position didn't matter.
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