The Daytona 500 Start Time Rivals the Super Bowl Kickoff Time
A major Google Trends search item at the moment is "Daytona 500 start time." This leads to total confusion on my part. If you are a true blue NASCAR fan, how could you not know the Daytona 500 start time on the very day of the Daytona 500?The same thing happened two weeks ago on Super Bowl Sunday. People by the tens of thousands were logging onto their computers and asking, "When is the Super Bowl kickoff?"
How can you not know, if you are a fan? Why do you have to ask the Daytona 500 start time, or when is the Super Bowl kickoff?
As for the Daytona 500 start time, the Daytona 500 probably has become the second-most prominent sports event in the United States, trailing only the Super Bowl. NASCAR is totally popular.
I'm a former sportswriter, age 53, who sometimes can't help but cling to the traditional sports world of my childhood. Back then, the four major sports, in order, were baseball, football, basketball and hockey. None of my childhood friends back in the 1960s thought of NASCAR a whit, much less the Daytona 500 start time. Actually ---- and this may sound strange to younger folks - the Indianapolis 500 was on the map, but not the Daytona 500.
Things have changed so much! Obviously, football has surpassed baseball. Maybe even basketball has surpassed baseball; people say they don't like the NBA, but Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are huge names. As for hockey, we may as well not even bother with hockey as somehow being one of those four major sports, to the dismay of all of the Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings fans who surround me here in Saginaw, Michigan. Could you, as a general sports fan, have identified the Detroit Red Wings as the incumbent Stanley Cup champions? Maybe yes, but maybe no.
NASCAR and the Daytona 500, under the radar of the mass sports media, may have become the second major sport, ahead of both baseball and football. I'll bet the ratings for the Daytona 500 are better than the ratings for World Series baseball. And if the ratings for the Daytona 500 are not yet better in sheer numbers, compared to the World Series, it definitely would seem that the ratings will be higher in terms of fan intensity.
Comments
Great work, as always. :-)
Anonymous
(Guest)
(Guest)
02/15/2009
the only line the writer of this artical needs to be in is the unemployment line.
screw you nascar,,i'l find out sometime next week
mattthecoolest
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(Guest)
02/15/2009
Yea, Back in the day the start time was 1:00 pm sharp. Now who knows when the race is going to start. I have no need to watch driver waving to fans for hour.
30 Year Fan
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(Guest)
02/15/2009
"How can you not know, if you are a fan? "
NASCAR started right after church and ended intimefor Sunday supper for most of my life. Now it starts according to west coast viewers and tv time. I'm interested in the race, not the pre-race hoopla and I am notinterested in watching a race that goes through Sunday supper when families are to be together.
That's how I could not know when the race starts.
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