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Cathy's Corner
NASCAR columnist Cathy Elliott <<>> Courtesy of NASCAR
For seven years Cathy Elliott as media director for Darlington Raceway, the track "Too Tough to Tame", used her skills to overcome many logistical elements, but in the shadow of those dreaded walls she also honed the ability to tame the right words.
Refreshing column words from Elliott are a cut away from mainstream and available to media from NASCAR. Enjoy an experienced and respected edge from one who has been ever so close to speed.
Cathy Elliott currently lives in Florence, SC.
Boos an Accurate Barometer of a Driver's Success By Cathy Elliott May 2008
If you attend a NASCAR event in order to get a little peace and quiet, you're in the wrong place.
A particularly appropriate phrase comes to mind, but another Southern writer has already coined it. I'm not quite egomaniacal enough to compare myself to William Faulkner, but I am just brave enough to blatantly "borrow" from him, as NASCAR is the perfect contemporary definition of "The Sound and the Fury."
Faulkner basically stole that line from William Shakespeare's "Macbeth," anyway, so I don't feel all that guilty about my own random act of plagiarism.
Much ado has been made lately about the declarations of derision greeting driver Kyle Busch under the following conditions: 1) During driver introductions prior to any race in any series in which he is competing; 2) during victory lane celebrations after every race he wins (this happens a lot); and 3) pretty much anytime Busch is present at a NASCAR venue.
To make a long story short, Kyle Busch generates a lot of noise, not much of it positive.
In ballparks and stadiums all across the country, fans are more than willing to express their opinions of a particular player or team loudly and at great length. Cheers and spirits simultaneously soar in Indianapolis, for example, when Peyton Manning is introduced before a Colts game; galleries erupt each and every time one of Tiger Woods' clubs makes contact with a golf ball.
Conversely, if an athlete is doing badly, spectators are quite prepared to let him know about it by opening up the cage and letting that boo-bird fly. After some of his experiences as a New York Yankee, I'm sure Alex Rodriguez would substantiate this statement.
We can pick and choose our favorites and foes, and hail or hiss them according to our moods and their own professional peaks and valleys, but generally speaking, the guys being booed are the losers. The underachievers. The ones who don't quite deliver the goods.
Kyle Busch does not fall into this category. In fact, he regularly offers same-day delivery in all of NASCAR's top three levels -- the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, the NASCAR Nationwide Series, and of course, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. He finishes what he starts. He is a winner.
This fact is not applauded. Rather, it is acknowledged with the loudest, most vociferous chorus of contempt conceivable from fans at every racetrack, every week. No one else's disapproval rating even makes a blip on the radar screen. Once again, Busch blows away the competition.
Here's the question: If Kyle Busch is an extremely gifted racer, which he is, and if he has the ability to go out on the track and compete for the win each week, which he does, where's the love, people? Why all this negativity?
It hasn't been so very long ago, after all, that a driver by the name of Dale Earnhardt was often criticized for being too brash, for racing too aggressively. The boo-bird flew shotgun with Earnhardt for years (probably because the poor thing was too intimidated to attempt an escape). He represented a villain, of sorts, until some whippersnapper named Jeff Gordon turned up and began taking him regularly to task on the track.
Suddenly, the worm had turned, and the bird flew the coop and followed it. Earnhardt was suddenly (and yes, deservedly) revered as a hero and an icon and the "greatest driver who ever lived", while the guy winning all the trophies became the most reviled racer on the circuit.
You know, sort of a "boo"merang effect.
How time flies. Nowadays, the formerly villainous Gordon is enjoying his own turn at hero status and is the most successful active driver in NASCAR. He has already become a racing legend. His teammate Jimmie Johnson is the defending two-time Cup Series champion.
Another of Gordon's teammates, Dale Earnhardt Jr., is NASCAR's most popular driver, hands down. Still, a different guy has taken the lion's share of the checkered flags so far this season.
It could almost give you reason to believe that in terms of NASCAR popularity, maybe it's not the fact you're winning that counts. Maybe it's whom you're beating that really matters.
So if Kyle Busch's honorary mascot turns out to be the boo-bird, at least for the time being, is that really such a bad thing?
Nope, because despite much flapping of wings and almost constant squawking, together they're flying high.
NASCAR Drivers Need Some Motherly Tough Love By Cathy Elliott May 2008
Both Mother's Day and Memorial Day fall in the month of May, so our thoughts naturally turn toward home and loved ones and spending time with the family. Now, I don't know about you, but my own family gatherings involve a fair amount of teasing and tattling, along with a few side trips down memory lane, invariably prefaced by the words, "Remember when ... "
Like most families, mine would embark on summer vacations to exotic locales like Disneyworld or "somewhere up in the mountains". Separated in age by only a couple of years, my brother and I dutifully did our part to carry on the time-honored tradition of siblings across the country and the world, as we tried our level best to pummel one another to pieces in the car on the way to wherever we were going.
Scott would punch me in the shoulder, and I'd bite him; he would kick me in the shin, and I'd return the favor by relieving him of a handful of his hair. (Yes, I admit it. I fight like a girl, due to the fact that I am one.)
Before we had logged many miles or sustained any serious injuries, my mom would turn around in the front seat and give us The Glare. You know the one; it burns through your skull like Superman's X-ray vision cuts through metal safes, bank vault doors and flank steak.
Then she would utter one of those customized mom phrases, immediately recognizable by the fact that each word is followed by a period: Roger. Scott. Best. Catherine. Elaine. Best. Do. Not. Make. Me. Come. Back. There.
When dealing with mothers, the absence of a contraction is ominous, especially when accompanied by the use of your full given name.
NASCAR has a comprehensive rule book. It governs participation in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series by spelling out the sport's can/can't clauses in black and white (and yes, it is read all over). As new situations arise in racing, the rule book evolves accordingly.
I have long suspected that new moms are armed with a rule book of their own. When they leave the hospital, they're packing something more than an infant wrapped in pink or blue. It is a built-in handbook containing key phrases legally allowed to be used only by mothers, and it grows and evolves into fluency right along with the child.
This begins during the toddler stage: "Don't put that in your mouth; you don't know where it's been!"
It really starts to gain some steam in the pre-pubescent years: "What did you just say? Where did you hear that word? Let me hear that again and I'll be washing your mouth out with soap." Full speed is achieved with teenagers: "Am I talking to a brick wall? What part of 'No' don't you understand?"
NASCAR is often described as a family, and when Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kyle Busch were racing for the win in Richmond in early May, the incident did indeed start to resemble a couple of squabbling siblings. He's on my side of the track! It wasn't my fault! He started it!
(Quick recap: Earnhardt and Busch were racing side-by-side for the lead during the final laps of the race when their cars "got together". Earnhardt, the leader at the time, spun out as a result of the incident. It cost him what looked like a certain victory. His fans didn't take it well, to put it mildly.)
The NASCAR rule book didn't come into play in this particular case as the incident was chalked up to what Dale Earnhardt Sr. would have called "just one of those racin' deals."
The mom rule book, on the other hand, is always in action where the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is concerned, with pages flying so fast and furiously the entire volume is subject to spontaneously combust at any given moment.
It begins with the usual pre-race admonitions: "Remember, it's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. And be sure to wear clean underwear in case you get caught up in an accident."
NASCAR is a sport where retaliation violates the rule book, but sometimes it happens anyway. Moms have their own way of dealing with this type of behavior: "If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you go with them? What is wrong with you? Were you born in a barn?"
Dust-ups on the track can result in some contentious behavior, prompting Mom to offer this sage advice: "Stop picking at that. It'll get infected. Don't make me tell you again."
In the heat of the moment, particularly during post-event interviews, the mouth displays a certain tendency to race ahead of the brain.
The fine art of speechmaking has been perfected by mothers over the course of many centuries, so they're more than happy to clue drivers in on the proper way to behave when a microphone is shoved into their face: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. Not another word out of you, young man!"
During races, if drivers behaved as if their moms were riding shotgun, I would venture to guess that NASCAR and the FCC would be very happy and altercations would be virtually eliminated. In fact, I'm going to strongly suggest to NASCAR's superstars that they give this method a shot during the long, hot summer months to come.
Why? Because I said so, that's why.
Know Your NASCAR By Cathy Elliott May 2008
It is an awful feeling, and in the manner of grim surprises since the beginning of time, you never see it coming. I was having a casual conversation over lunch the other day about fairly nebulous NASCAR topics; what I would consider general knowledge questions. We discussed the NASCAR Sprint Cup season so far, the next few races, the Chase, what in the world Tony Stewart will ultimately decide to do, anything and everything about Dale Earnhardt, Jr. … in other words, the usual.
"So," said my friend. "Where is Junior in the points right now, anyway?"
Okay, that's not a hard one, right? I opened my mouth to respond, and realized I had absolutely no idea what the answer was. No clue. Air in the head completely unhindered by the presence of any prescience whatsoever. Stumped. Behold my personal Trojan Horse. Bearing its warriors with names like Doubtus, Uncertainus and Second Guessius, a single simple question knocked me right off my own horse, formerly known as High.
The survival schmoozing mechanism sprung quickly into action; how could I save myself? Could I possibly bamboozle my way out of this? "Somewhere in the top 10" would have been an option … yeah, right, for my mom, maybe. I should know better; I am expected to know better.
So in a misguided but well-intentioned effort to somehow avoid complete and utter public disgrace, I took the road less traveled and opted for the truth, admitting that I couldn't remember. The fan on the street could have answered this question, but I could not.
For a person who, at least hypothetically, is supposed to know what she is talking about, there is no sicker feeling in the world than being asked a question you don't know the answer to. For me, it could be compared to being suddenly plunked down in the middle of an operating room, handed some scrubs in an unflattering shade of green along with a scalpel, and asked to perform heart surgery. Either that or trying to drive in Atlanta; they'd be pretty similar experiences for me on the scale of confusion.
I would feel totally lost.
How frustrating. Society has come up with a list of clever names to describe these periods of forgetfulness we all experience, like ""brain fade" or "senior moment", but the fact remains that sometimes when your turn rolls around, you simply draw a blank.
While this is good when playing a heated game of Scrabble and it can get you out of some of those sticky spelling jams, in real life it usually has the opposite effect.
Either way, it wins you no points.
One comment you still hear from time to time when discussing NASCAR is that the drivers are too young. They haven't paid their dues, people say. Everything has been handed to them; real silver spoon stuff.
Call me crazy, but I'm thinking the Rick Hendricks and Jack Roushes of the world know more than I or any of the rest of us about what makes a great racer. Most of the guys currently racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup and NASCAR Nationwide Series started competing when they were four or five years old. All the major NASCAR teams have driver development programs to teach their drivers anything they haven't learned, and reinforce what they already know. They are qualified and well-educated.
(Also, Mr. Hendrick and Mr. Roush would most likely be able to remember the answers to such questions, if they were asked. Unlike some people I could mention.)
Life is full of tests. Students are required to meet certain standards in subjects like reading, writing and my old nemesis, math, before they can be moved up to the next grade level. It seems we are constantly scored, evaluated and reviewed.
They run standardized tests on the cars, right? They're used to measure things like air flow and tire pressure. So maybe what we need is an equivalent standardized measurement of the people whose job it is to inform or entertain other people about those cars, and about the men and women who drive them. It could be used to measure our NASCAR knowledge levels, in much the same manner as the SAT evaluates critical thinking skills. It wouldn't even require a complicated acronym; we could go with something simple, like the Racing Aptitude Test, or RAT.
I'll keep you updated on my progress. For now, I need to sign off, as I have a busy day ahead. I need to check out NASCAR.COM, watch "NASCAR Now," listen to some NASCAR radio on Sirius 128, and read the NASCAR media guide cover to cover.
Plus, my new copy of "NASCAR For Dummies Who Think They Know More Than They Really Do" has just arrived, so I have some major studying to do.
I think I smell a RAT.
Don't Look Down By Cathy Elliott April 2008
One of the most enjoyable things I do during the course of my normal work week in the Darlington, S.C. area is serve as part-time co-host of a morning sports talk radio program, the Powerade Press Box (see, it really is all about the sponsorship, even in the Small To Mid-Market Radio Series.)
It's a blast. Friday, the day I'm in the studio with the show's host Allen Smothers, AKA the "Bad Boy of Sports Radio", is NASCAR day, so listeners save up their questions and fire them at me from 8 to 10 a.m. By the end of each week we generally have a pretty decent variety of topics, such as the most recent race, any penalties and fines, the upcoming events, and the latest Tony Stewart comment.
We also talk about Jimmie Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, a lot.
One week I had the distinct pleasure of discussing the intricacies of the sway bar for an extended period of time, at the end of which I almost sounded like I knew what I was talking about. Please don't ask me to explain camber.
But there is one topic so predictable that we actually have an over/under side bet on it in the studio. Inevitably, a call will come in, and we will answer it, and the following question will be asked: "When is Junior going to win a race?" It is the one topic we can never seem to get away from.
I don't mind, really. While NASCAR has become ubiquitous in the mainstream media, certain of the sport's stars, like Geico's gecko or Travelocity's roaming gnome, have become the faces of the franchise without bearing its actual name.
Along with guys like Kasey Kahne, Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards, the same can be said of Dale Earnhardt Jr.Sometimes quietly and at other times quite publicly, he has become the central axis around which a major portion of NASCAR-mania revolves.
I can't tell you diddly about soccer, but I know who David Beckham is. Legions of folks who have never watched one single, solitary golf match seem to know an awful lot about Tiger Woods. Sometimes that elusive but specific combination of location, timing and circumstance converges in just the right way, and the result is a supernova that for a while eclipses everything around it with the sheer force of its light. Currently, in NASCAR terms, Junior is that star.
Of course, the top of anything is an exhilarating but precarious place to be. The view is spectacular as long as you continue to look forward, or upward, but don't look down, because all you'll see there is a very slippery slope.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., the most insanely popular driver in the sport, represents the very pinnacle of NASCAR recognition. Fans who don't technically "pull for him," as the saying goes, still like the guy. They know who he is, of course, but they feel they know him, too.
He is the guy, after all, who likes to eat crushed-up Doritos on his bologna sandwiches. He is real. Fame may not fit him as comfortably as a tailor-made suit, and in fact he seems almost embarrassed by it at times, but he wears it well. It has admittedly been difficult to watch him work so hard and come so close and still remain winless in this, his first year with Hendrick Motorsports.
I don't know when Junior will get that next win, although in my heart I truly feel it won't be long now. Let me be the first to admit that I'm ready for it to happen, so we can all celebrate, heave a huge sigh of relief, get past it, move on and talk about something new … like when Junior will get his second win of the season.
Dog Day Afternoon By Cathy Elliott February 2008
Whoever coined the sentiment that the race does not always go to the swiftest probably feels a little bit smug when NASCAR brings its horsepower to restrictor plate tracks such as Daytona and Talladega. There may be a clear favorite or frontrunner, and history sometimes does repeat itself, but it is virtually impossible in the beginning to guess who, in the end, will be the winner.
The opening race of the 2008 Sprint Cup Series season on February 17 is a prime example. Few prognosticators predicted that Ryan Newman would win his first Daytona 500 that day, but that's exactly what happened.
This principle is not specific to NASCAR. A few days earlier and a few dozen degrees colder, another type of underdog made a statement of his own when a beagle was declared Best in Show by the Westminster Kennel Club for the first time in the competition's history.
Most of the official odds makers probably didn't see that one coming as the hound is not one of the more glamorous breeds, but on that day, beagles were the best.
There are plenty of obvious jokes to be made here, like how the week of February 12 was virtually a dog and pony show, and how there were many hot dogs but only one top dog. While the Westminster Dog Show and the Daytona 500 may seem on the surface to have absolutely nothing in common, there are actually a number of parallels to be drawn.
Both events are at the very pinnacle of their genres. Each incorporates preliminary levels of qualification prior to the main event. Both feature a wide variety of competitors with an array of different attributes, but one common goal.
They all want to win; the desire is fierce, and manifests itself in many unique ways.
There are those who live for the hunt. While generally not large in size, they are brave and tough, with lively, energetic personalities. They are intensely enthusiastic but can sometimes be on the rambunctious side, requiring an owner with a firm hand. As you can see, this almost perfectly describes Kyle Busch, Juan Pablo Montoya, Denny Hamlin … and rat terriers.
Others, while generally friendly and gregarious, are known to be fiercely loyal and passionately committed to their tasks. Efforts have been made to work their aggression out, but they are prone to flashes of willfulness. Competitors fitting this category include Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick … and bulldogs.
Strikingly sleek and athletic, Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne and Jimmie Johnson personify the face of contemporary racing. They are pack-oriented and work well in groups. They are extremely friendly toward strangers and popular with children. They are among the fastest creatures on earth. Interestingly, this description also applies to greyhounds.
Top 10 lists may vary, but one name is invariably at the top of each and every one as the most popular. Characterized by affability, intelligence and boundless energy, appreciation and praise always elicit a positive response from this list-topper. He can be somewhat boisterous, but is considered one of the most dependable in his class. He, of course, is Dale Earnhardt, Jr. … and the Labrador retriever.
The beagle also makes all the top 10 lists, but he is usually somewhere near the middle of the pack. Beagles are known for being low-key; in fact, the most famous beagle in history--Snoopy--played sidekick to Charlie Brown's superstar status.
The secret to the beagle's popularity lies in his dependability. He may not be the most flamboyant, but he always tries his hardest, and accepts the outcome, whatever it may be, with equanimity and an even temper. While he may not spend a lot of time jumping up and down like some of his livelier companions, he is always fun to watch.
Since he won the Daytona 500, some have criticized Ryan Newman for not seeming excited enough about the win, but I can guarantee you that, for that one day at least, Newman was the happiest guy in the country.
Excitement doesn't always have to equal excitability, and just because Newman doesn't express his feelings more doesn't mean he feels them any less. He simply got to work, got down to business, and got the job done--quietly. The fact that he chose to enjoy his fireworks after the race instead of during it didn't make them any less spectacular.
Every dog deserves to have his day. Even Snoopy, remember, had the chance to kick the Red Baron in the rear spoiler every now and again.
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