Why cant Sportsman Racing be like this on TV these days???

[Greg Hill]

There has been in the last 25 or so years a complete lack of promotion for sportsman racing, unless you include alcohol cars as sportsmen. i don't know if that has been on purpose or just a lack of knowledge by the management at NHRA. Even the times occasionally that there is a sportsman TV program it focuses almost exclusively on alcohol cars. I can remember back to the late 60's and early 70's going to Indy to watch and there were huge crowds the days of class with people hanging off the fence.

When there are only 8 or 16 stock and super stock cars left on Sunday at a National event and they run before most of the fans are even there, how are people even going to find out about us? The lack of effort from NHRA to promote sportsman racing is just another way in which they have strayed from what their mission should be and that should be to make drag racing better for all the competitors and the fans. All they [NHRA] know any more is top fuel and funny car. It's no wonder that's what a lot of the fans know and like because that's all that ever gets promoted. When I first started racing in the late 60's I knew who Don Prudome was and Don Gartlis, but I also knew who Ronnie Sox was and Bob Glidden, and Bill Jenkins, and Jimmy Waibel and George Cureton and a lot more. These guys were in the pages of Hot Rod and Car craft and Popular Hot Rodding on a monthly basis.

I don't know if stock and super stock could ever be as popular as they once were but I do know no one is trying to make them popular with the fans and no one is promoting them.