Full Throttle

Admit it, you’ve seen all the doom and gloom headlines that proclaim “NASCAR Dead, Attendance low, TV Ratings Drop to New Low!”

They have become part and parcel of the sports reportage for the last 18 months or longer.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not here to paint a picture of everything being chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream. Oh no, there’s still room for concern, I’m just placing things into a different perspective.

NASCAR is still king compared to the NBA.

A Saturday night match-up between the NBA Playoffs - a conference semi-finals game between Cleveland and Atlanta - and the Southern 500 from Darlington, SC, was no contest at all, according to preliminary ratings.

Brian France’s boys drew 6.5 million viewers on Fox to the NBA’s 4.5 million on ABC.

A couple things to point out, first a 2 million differential in viewership is nothing to sneeze at and secondly, Atlanta is smack-dab in the center of NASCAR Nation. And the Cleveland area, along with neighboring Indiana, are hotbeds of basketball.

One would think it being a conference semi-finals game the numbers would be higher. On the other hand I may still be suffering from “Danica Euphoria” from the preceding post.

It’s hard to tell.

But I will say this, over-night ratings aren’t worth the price of the cheap Chinese abacus they’re produced on. They are in fact the lie that keeps on giving.