I am only now watching ESPN 2’s off-season series on the ramp-up of Michael Waltrip Racing for 2007, after letting it languish on the tivo since the winter. It is especially interesting to see it now, knowing what a debacle the early 2007 season has been for Waltrip. Let me explain. No, there is no time; let me sum up:
As you know, I follow a baseball discussion group that usually has some interesting stuff posted. What follows is a post by William Juliano, a Yankee fan by trade, and frequent contributor to that discussion group. Thought it might be of interest to you guys here:
As I wrote earlier, Ameriquest has formally asked to be released from the final two years of its three-year deal to sponsor Greg Biffle’s #16 Ford Fusion. I guess we can infer that they’re on board for the rest of 2007 - maybe they paid up front, otherwise presumably they would bail now and save the incremental cash. Anyway, Biffle’s sponsors seem to have the life expectancy of Spinal Tap drummers, so prospective replacements, consider yourselves warned. And Biffle’s other main sponsor is Subway, so let’s none of us be shocked the morning we read about Jared dying in a bizarre gardening accident.
A few disparate items and the mosaic they form:
1) Greg Biffle won’t be the only driver to lose a sponsor if Ameriquest fails - another subsidiary of the company sponsors Danica Patrick in the Indy Racing League. I don’t know how the economics of the IRL work but I’d hazard a guess that they’re dominated by that event that precedes the Coca Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend, by which time Danica’s primary sponsor may well have gone the way of all flesh.
2) Props to Juan Pablo Montoya for his first Nextel Cup top-5 finish in Atlanta last weekend. Evidence that success in NASCAR is attainable for F1 drivers, and that notwithstanding the affinity of some infield denizens for the Stars and Bars, foreign drivers are welcome. Relax, Juan Pablo, they’re just Skynyrd fans.
3) Defending Indy 500 champ Sam Hornish is toying with participating in the “other” Indianapolis race - NASCAR’s Brickyard 400.
What does it all mean? NASCAR’s higher profile and, more to the point, higher purses, are drawing talent away from other top-tier racing formats. Indy car racing never really recovered from the CART-IRL split that, at least temporarily, took the most famous drivers out of the Indy 500. The less said about the attempt to bring F1 racing the the US, the better. The long and short of it is that while alternate racing leagues may have had a fighting chance to displace NASCAR during the 1990s, they opted for self-immolation and now may be doomed to cede talent, popularity and money to stock car racing. It is easy to imagine the IRL (and to a lesser extent, F1) reduced to the status of developmental programs, if indeed they remain economically viable at all.
Greg Biffle’s new primary sponsor this year, replacing the National Guard, is subprime lender Ameriquest Mortgage. But in the past three weeks the subprime mortgage business has imploded, and lenders like Ameriquest are finding themselves hard pressed to maintain enough credit to stay in business. Ameriquest just bailed out of its 30-year naming rights deal for the Texas Rangers’ stadium, and they were only paying around $2.5 million per year for that. Primary sponsorship of a Nextel Cup team runs about 10 times that figure, so its hard to believe their NASCAR deal will long outlive their MLB deal. The bright side, such as it is, is that this is happening to a driver for Jack Roush, who of course is now a partner of the Boston Red Sox ownership, so their misfortune pleases me mightily. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA
An article in today’s WSJ previews the upcoming book “The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed,” by Prof. J.C. Bradbury of Kennesaw State University in Georgia. It sounds like a valuable contribution to the body of work pioneered by Bill James and Palmer & Thorn, and most famously chronicled by Michael Lewis in Moneyball. On the issue of the benefits of larger markets to their home teams, Professor Bradbury’s regression analysis shows that every incremental 1.58 million residents in a market yields one incremental win for the team. A win is a win (tautologically speaking), but clearly the magnitude of the market size advantage is dwarfed by the impact of deciding whether or not to spend $3 million on a declining Chan Ho Park, or multiples of that to bring geriatric former Cy Young winners to the Bronx.
Two items in today’s New York Times put the NCAA’s de facto raison d’etre in stark relief:
Item 1: The NCAA chides Oklahoma for inadequately policing its football players’ off-field activities, thereby enabling two of them to - WARNING: MOVE ANY YOUNG CHILDREN AWAY FROM YOUR SCREEN BEFORE READING ON