NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I did somthing I dont normally do on the weekend. I tried to choke down a ESPN broadcast of dragracing. I told myself not to do it but the "trainwreck" watcher in me prevailed.
After watching the meaningless drivle they call interviews and a couple of commercials they finally show a peddle fest first round match up 4 times over (okay we got it the first time). Instead of this CRAP they could show tidbits of sportsman racing and increasing the amount of actual racing.BUT NOOOOOOO they want to show "sounds of the strip" instead!

ARE YOU FREAKIN KIDDING ME!

The piss poor editing, lack of real racing and the "pro wrestling' mentality of NHRA on tv has once again confirmed that NHRA & ESPN HATE sportsman racing. WHY? Maybe because we are more interesting and they know it but dont want to let people know that.
Okay i have vented but seriously is there someone out there who can set us up with a good tv producer and get us our own show?

Does anyone else agree with me or am i just a ranting fool who believes we have marketing value?

Lawnmower racing gets better coverage than we do...

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

[QUOTE

Lawnmower racing gets better coverage than we do...[/QUOTE]

I love lawnmower racing... Where can I find it on TV??

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

NHRA broadcasts are tiresome in the ways that you mention, but sportsman racing, while fun to watch live, is not something meant for TV, IMO. They appear to be crawling down the strip. If they were a viable TV product, I think they would have been telecast by now.

No disrespect to any of you sportsman. I can watch you all day live, but not on TV.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I hate to admit it, but Pinks and Passtime have made sportsman type cars a viable TV product. For whatever reason, they are just shunned by the ESPN coverage. I don't get it! There is so much down time and crap during ESPN race coverage that you could fit in the semis on in for all the eliminators and still not miss a beat on pro coverage. If memory serves, I believe the old Diamond P telecasts had the finals in all the eliminators.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

THIS is one of the best posts I have read on this forum in quite awhile. It should be sent straight to NHRA AND to ESPN.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

Ten second cars don't look as slow on pinks because you didn't see a four second car just run. Class racing was a better show when we ran off of records so everybody was not playing games at the finish line. Nobody wants to watch that. We are just filler, and we need to get over it or find something else to do. Thirty years ago the stands didn't empty when we came up to run the way they do now. We are now, with the bogus soft indexes, not a lot better to watch that the throttle stop bracket cars.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

Try Larry Pfister's Horsepower Heaven videos, of "Four Days in May" fame. This guy can do the filming (with a single camera), narration, and editing all by himself and create an entertaining package. www.horsepowerheaven.com He's got some trailers on youtube, too. Sanctioning bodies and TV producers could learn a LOT from this guy about presentation.

Watched a little drag boat racing on TV last week, and it was pretty decent.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

No kidding. Sportsman racing, especially class racing, can be promoted and filmed to look as good as it can be.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

We need Rich Christensen to make it happen....he did it with Pinks and Passtime. Why not have it on the Speed channel ?

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

What is missing on the shows is due to the people in high places and those doing the edits know nothing about drag racing, just promotion.
Its all about promotion and selling it to the public.
They just do the same thing as the wrestling people do, its all about the show.
If you note Pinks never shows the scoreboards with times and MPH. They show the start of the race and the finish line with very little in the middle. Not the whole 11 or 12 second run in most cases. That is called creative editing by someone who knows drag racing plus it does not have dead time with no action.
Until someone in charge with the TV coverage actually knows something about drag racing nothing will change.
My 2 Cents
Rick Cates

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

What do you thing they think of W.J.
and the rest of the pro stocks not going to run the 2nd rd.
Does anyone know if they did spray before the 2nd rd ?

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

my thoughts exactly

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

The trouble here isn't that we're boring or don't have an audience. We see shows about disfunctional biker families, disfunctional Funny Car families, Ice Road Truckers and crab fishermen and maybe it's just me but they have managed to find an audience. The trouble is that Sportsmen haven't (or can't or won't) found anyone to put down the money to produce a show. For what advertizing costs I have to believe that a Sportsmen biased company (Jegs, Summit, Edelbrock) can't or hasn't looked into producing a Sportsmen related show in lieu of paying for the commercials. Hey, Musclecars, Hot Rod TV and Car Crazy are just half hour infomercials.
Now I'm not a TV producer by any stretch of the imagination but I'll bet that somebody in the Sportsmen community is in some way involved in TV production and can maybe explain to me why this can or can't be done.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

It's not that they hate us, they just don't think about us. They could care less.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

This is just a camera angle and distance problem. All they have to do is a live cam longer and closer shots following the cars down. When ur doing fuel cars they they wide angle the lens cause of the speed. With us, they need to focus on the tree, wheelstands, the incrementals and photo finishes cause there are a lot of them!! :eek:

Then get some decent announcers that know the sport, geeze most of the announcers sound like golf announcers. Rick is right, If you really want to see how its done, look at how they make the "Pinks" shows!! They add a little drama to the racing by getting the fans to know the sports. I don't exactly like the way they do it; it needs to be cleaned up a bit, but that's what people like!!:)

I've seen runs on you tube better that speed channel!!!!

Stacy

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

i love this tractor what engine is that?

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

There's another way of looking at the pro's and sportsman racing, ESPN may know that the sportsman racing would be alot more fun for TV audiance, but NHRA wants to keep just the pro catigories on the air. You're not going to get from a sportsman racer that his "Snap-on,Castrol, ARP,Jerico,Mcleod,Valvoline,Target,Walmart,Ford,Ch evy" broke out because he miss judged the finish line on an interview. That's it!

Casey Miles
248H

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I don't quite understand all the bitchin about lack of sportsman coverage. some of the mot outstanding coverage of sportsman racing is happening RIGHT HERE from some of the best commentators and photographers you could possibly hope for. with actual racers providing timely and accurate info. this list of reporting provided by the likes of Toby Lang-Larry Hill-Ken Miehle and Jack Matayas just to name a few far surpasses anything that could be provided from some suit at a tv studio. so next time you find yourself disgusted with espn coverage turn off that idiot box-get your lazy a%% off the couch and tune into Class Racer and Dragracecental for the best coverage of real dragracing one could possibly hope for. thanks again to Toby-Larry-Ken and Jack!

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

On a somewhat-related topic--does anyone know why NHRA doesn't have live finals/qualifying coverage anymore? I thought the reason they did away with it was due to oildowns and downtime causing them to run behind schedule. Now, with the 75 minute turnarounds for the Pro's, and limited Sportsman action on Sunday, why not go back to Live stuff? When Indy had live coverage during the weekend, they showed ALL Finals live, from Super Gas to Top Fuel. Why not now? You could still stick us lowly Sportsman into a five minute window and still have 2-3 hours of other time for your precious Pro Show. NHRA also used to have a live, all-day Sunday show on Pay Per View for a while, but I think I know why they don't now--NHRA would want too big of a cut from the cable/satellite providers for the providers to make any money.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

That coverage is great, for us. But it doesn't go beyond this site, so it doesn't sell sportsman class racing.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

The top dogs at NHRA think of us as a financial loser in their eyes. BUT look at PINKS and PASSTIME, those shows have proven that we are marketable if produced right. Even NHRA noticed enough to create "unleashed" but because they are ALL accountants and failed business men they have NO passion for the sport and no clue how to make it work.
I did a bit on a local cable access show that my shop advertises on about stock and super stock and the producer said it was one of his highest rated episodes. It included driver interviews and pit footage BUT NHRA would not let him shoot film on the starting line. Even if we could find a production company we would still have to have our own race because NHRA would not let us steal our own thunder from them even if they are not remotely interested.
They are putting ALL their eggs in the pro basket. Good luck with that because pro teams are pricing themselves out of the market FAST!

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

Does anyone remember back in the early 90's when ESPN covered IHRA drag racing and Bret Kepner did the sportsman interviews . They showed the last 2 or 3 rounds of eliminations with us . I was lucky enough to win hot rod class in 91 at New York International Raceway and was interviewed by Bret after i won . This was aired on ESPN. I still have a copy of that whole show/. Them was the good ole days . All the other sportsman had the same coverage that race and that whole year .Maybe Bret could get someone's interest in this again.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

Are there still any DVD's floating around of the US Class Nationals?

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I doubt the pinks people would be interested in handicap starts and on-the-brakes finish line antics. Their stuff is all heads up flat out, right?

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

Trust me, Pinks has no clue either. At PBIR they had in their final group of cars that competed where between 10.50 to 10.80. To them (Pinks), the 3 tenths means nothing, but to my friend who was in the group and had to run a 10.50 car with his 10.70 car, he knew he was done. Yeah, heads up works when it close, but 2 tenths was a joke.
Casey Miles
248H

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

Casey, I don't think that bunch has a clue about much. Just hype. I do watch the show for grins, if nothing else is on at the time.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

The premise is 'all out' but if they think you ran too fast, they'll disqualify you! They look at your MPH in relation to your ET and if there is a discrepancy (in THEIR opinion), you're OUT!

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

Great thread! I couldn't agree with you more..

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

They aren't as knowelgable as they think.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

How many of you watched the live coverage of the Seattle event on ESPN3.COM yesterday? I know I didn't because I was at Lebanon Valley watching the All-Star Racing Association's Stock/Super Stock combo race.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I spent about 7 hours with the laptop yesterday, Dave. It was pretty cool to see everything in its "raw" form, plus I got to see Larry and Kevin's heads-up and all the rest of the sportsman rounds that were run. Much of the webcast, and all of the S/SS etc., had NO talking. My only complaints: #1) 7 hours. It was impossible to try and gauge when the next round of S/SS would be running, due to lots of downtime (and not knowing the run schedule), so I just stuck with it through the whole thing.
#2) No finish line camera or win lights for the classes that aren't televised. I had to check DRC to find out the winners of each round. (Except the finals - since that gets shown on their "Sportsman" show, they had Dave R. and Lewis B. announcing for those.)
I personally hope they do more of the Nats this way - I'd definitely have to figure out a way to record the webcast!

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I understand this point and this the problem, average people dont get it. But my mom wont watch Barrett Jackson either. I think laced with some heads up runs and wheelstanding drama, this wouldnt be a problem. Most of the people watching are enthusiasts. Point well taken though, some learning curve needs to happen but so what! you'd be surprised how many "withit" people are into it!

I think NHRA should try it, heck you can't feel a fuel car over the air either but people that have been there know. Heck they dont even televise the HEMI-SHOOTOUT. that's heads up and how cool is that I ask you!!!!

Stacy

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

That was done at three national events in 1997. It was a shot at seeing how much interest such programs would draw. They didn't draw enough PPV viewers to continue doing PPV the next season.

I think the main reason they didn't draw enough viewers was because hardly anyone knew about it. Apparently it was under-promoted by ESPN and the NHRA to the point that some cable systems refused to provide the programs to their customers. I knew about the PPV because I was working in drag racing. My home town population was roughly 300,000 at the time. I assumed that PPV programs that were made available by major TV outlets would automatically be picked up and be available on all cable systems with the channel capacity to carry it. I was wrong. As the first PPV approached, I didn't see it available on my local cable system's schedule. I called them and asked about it, and I was told I was the only person in my city who asked for the program! They would not make it available for me to buy, so I missed the first one. A couple weeks before the second PPV was to be broadcast, it was the same deal - not on my cable system's schedule. I went down to their central office and talked to several people trying to get them to carry it. The answer was no....not enough interest. The next day I bought a DirecTV dish and receiver. The day after that, I installed it, and took my cable box down to their central office. I told them to cancel my service, and I told them why.

Given the number of hoops I had to jump through just to pay my $14.99/ event to see the second and third events, it's no wonder there weren't enough viewers to continue that type of programming.

The availability of such programming also likely scared the hell out of national event track owners. The Sunday front gate receipts (and parking and concessions) are make or break a season for some of them, and to see that cash flow diminish because live Sunday full event elimination coverage was available in the comfort of any fan's living room for $14.99 may also have been part of the reason the PPV ended after a three race trial.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I had Direct back then, and got all 3 PPV shows. Enjoyed them, too. I'd do it again, too, if I weren't at the races.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

Yes i remember could not wait to watch the next show......

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I went and paid 1500 for my Direct tv just to watch those wish they still had them

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I don't even watch the "pros" anymore.......

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I seem to remember saying the exact same thing a few months back, but was hammered by a handful of naysayers, which perpetuates (or persuades) the masses into thinking it's not the answer. I've discussed this at length with Rich. Guess what? It's up to us to support it, not him or anyone else. Also, fans support passion, not egos. Once everyone understands and accepts this, we then must collectively agree to work together. That's where Rich could be of help.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

You guys are missing it. The whole TV deal is set up for the PRO Racers Org and NHRA. The TV time is for the big sponsors that bring the cash to the table. Official toilet paper supplier to the NHRA, now you are on TV. I dont think Pro Bike is even a part of PRO either.
Ask the pro stockers that have the "in-car cameras" how much they pay for those cameras to be in their cars. Notice the NAPA /Capps interviews during the minimal pro stock tv coverage. No big sponsors so you only get half screen view during elims!

Wonder what happened to PS Truck? Think about the TV time the baddest class was taking from Kenny Bernstien and BUD on Saturdays qualifing shows.
Thats why the sportsman get so little time. No ticket no laundry.

The PAY PER VIEWS were to soon for their time, you had to have dish or direct to get them which was a small subscriber base. Again they take away from PRO and their sponsors getting the value for their advertising money....

On another note, anyone notice that the majority of sportsman photos in Dragster are of cars that have the drivers names on them rather than a sponsors name? If there is a sponsors name the angle is so that they are hard to read. The high profile dragster sponsors seem to have more exposure as well. K&N Valvoline Lucas etc...

Just my ramblings....I believe its about the money period.........How else does the "Board" make so much money? Its not membership or race entries.

Re: NHRA & ESPN must HATE sportsmen.
 

I agree,,,the way Larry Pfister shoots his videos is very well done,,,especially for a one man crew. Go to www.horsepowerheaven.com and check it out for yourself. I have several of his videos including: 4Days In May,,Monsters of Launch, the various Hemi-Shootout videos and the West Coast Hemis' team video.
Michael,,,I have both Vol.1 and Vol. 2 of the US Classnationals,,,I'll always remember how impressed I was by the guy that stood there all day long, in that heat, and filmed every run! At the end of the day, on Friday, I walked over to him and shook his hand and told him he was one of the toughest guys I'd ever seen to do what he did, and ordered those videos on the spot. Vol.1 is basically event coverage, and Vol.2 is final rounds of all classes. The only problem is, that it was so long ago, I got them in VHS instead of DVD, which I didn't have yet. Take care,,,,,,,,Danny Durham