NASCAR's PR has worked, people are actually watching it now

I suspected right from the start that the media coverage of a man almost nobody knew existed propelled to the front line of media when cries of racism erupted in NASCAR. It started with the confederate flag being banned and then extended to Bubba Wallace claiming to have found a noose in his garage that was meant to be in retaliation for his being vocal about the removal of the confederate flags and his plugging of Black Lives Matter.

I don't think that most people really even care about NASCAR and they have seen dwindling viewership over the years, which has all changed at least for now.

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I have nothing against Wallace but I really don't like when politics or social issues get infused with sports, even motorsports that I really don't care about at all because I find no enjoyment in watching a bunch of cars go around in a circle for 4 hours. It just doesn't do it for me and I don't understand why it would for anyone else. To each their own I say, and although I did not watch it, apparently Nascar is getting a new wave of fans, due at least in part because of the controversy that surrounded Bubba.

The Bristol All-Star Race just happened and there are a lot of fans complaining that Bubba was even involved in the race because he doesn't exactly have the best stats and certainly not good enough to be considered one of the "All Stars." Consequently he crashed out early in the race and then immediately blamed it on another driver named Michael McDowell.

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Bubba stopped short of making the crash a racial issue, but he did seem to suggest that McDowell did it on purpose and said it was "disrespectful." This happened during the "Open" portion of the race which I guess is a qualifying round or something. I'm sorry for being vague, but I am not a fan of this sport.

The point of all of this is that the media is going to be watching Bubba and therefore NASCAR because of the notoriety that he has gained because of his media exposure. In most news cycles, NASCAR might only get a blurb here and there but all of the sports aggregate sites have multiple articles about the Bristol race, most of which focus on Wallace, who didn't even do very well. He crashed out of the race in the 2nd lap. Was it intentional on the part of McDowell? Who knows, I know that I don't really care.

I am a little upset about the fact that the media is so focused on Wallace they they barely even mention who won the damn thing and that was someone named Chase Elliott, who I also know next to nothing about.

I don't think it is too much of a stretch to suggest that NASCAR is going to milk this for all it is worth because as they say, any publicity is good publicity and NASCAR has been experiencing tremendous difficulty in bringing in new fans for quite a few years.

For me, I am probably going to watch just as many NASCAR events this year as I have watched in the past 20 years... None