The Death of the Promoter Ironic as NASCAR Contemplates Saving Itself
Humpy Wheeler's recent passing may be a harbinger to a change in NASCAR's ways.
On August 20th of this year, Howard Augustine “Humpy” Wheeler Jr. passed away.
Humpy Wheeler was known for his legendary tenure at Charlotte Motor Speedway as track president from 1976 to 2008. Often compared to P.T. Barnum, Wheeler would stage dozens of outlandish stunts over the years and would back it up with plenty of results.
Some of his staff, namely Ed Clark and Eddie Gossage, would later use their experience working under Wheeler to successful track presidencies of their own. Charlotte had a 54-race sellout streak under Wheeler.
Wheeler was seemingly the only person who knew how to effectively promote the All-Star Race concept, with very few post-Wheeler highlights of the race being shown whenever it gets hyped up.
Later in life, Wheeler would start his own YouTube channel. One of the topics Wheeler talked about in one of his videos was on the then newly announced NASCAR playoff system.
“I think it’s going to usher in a new type of driver,” Wheeler said. “A driver we haven’t seen since the days of Charlie Glotzbach, Buddy Baker, LeeRoy Yarbrough, those kind of guys who were wild as dickens on the racetrack.
“Because the emphasis is on winning. Win or you die! You’ve got to win. It’s no more ‘I finished fifth, I had a great points day, and now I’m up in the top 10 [in points]”
Wheeler was absolutely 100% correct on this point, and he supported this format very hard (”No one ever bought a ticket to a points race”).
Fast forward to now. NASCAR has made it clear this year that they are going to change their format once again and that anything is on the table. And it is incredible that the argument with the most momentum for it, that of a return to a full-season championship, is for a system that Wheeler hated.
In sports, there is a struggle between what is right to maintain the integrity of the game and what is right to increase the commercial success of the game. The tug-of-war between sport and business is something every sports league or organization has to try and get a balance on.
NASCAR, from day one, has struggled with it. The first Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway in 1950 was essentially fixed from the get-go. Bill France wanted to try and lure manufacturers to invest in racing, so he and his partners bought a Plymouth that was going to be easier on the special experimental Firestone tires than the much larger Grand National cars of the time. Johnny Mantz won by over nine laps just because he used significantly fewer tires than anybody else in the race.
Wheeler epitomized this commercial side more than anybody else. Again, it cannot be understated the irony that the sport side of the tug-of-war finally began to gain some ground on the commercial aspects of it almost as soon as the last great promoter passed away.
If we use Wheeler’s logic, NASCAR should be seeing full grandstands and bursting television ratings. Nobody cares about finishing fifth anymore; it’s all about the win. And that’s exactly how drivers race.
The issue is that it turns out things are a little more complicated than that.
Points racing was NASCAR’s identity for 40-some years. Hell, it’s been part of most major motorsports sports in the world for nearly 100 years. The first Daytona 500 under the Bob Latford system in 1975 had a purse of $265,700. The 2004 Daytona 500, the first under a playoff system, had a total purse of just under $14 million.
Taking that away means that you’d be taking away what made people interested in NASCAR in the first place.
NASCAR is all action now. Drivers running into each other on double-file restarts in overtime. A proper long green flag run rarely breaks out now thanks in part to stages. To steal an anaology from my Bluesky bud Zack Moses, NASCAR is all ice cream and sugar now. Not a lot of substance.
They lighted that old sense of purpose previously held up into flames. Why? To chase new viewers with this radical new system. But that would only work if those new viewers were interested.
So, what are the results of this?
New viewers instead are, if anything, watching Formula 1, judging by the 19-49 age demos from a few years ago.
And just to be clear, this is not the first time Wheeler had a crazy opinion with these same pros and cons. He wrote a book with Peter Golenboch in 2010, and it is a very unique read just to get a view of some of the ideas in his mind.
One of his ideas was to demolish Darlington. Yes, demolish Darlington. Then go to Myrtle Beach, about two hours away, and completely rebuild it there.
He rationalized this by pointing out that Myrtle Beach had a much better infrastructure than tiny Darlington, from hotels to other amenities. But that clearly would have been devastating to anybody in NASCAR’s older fanbase.
Again, nothing against Wheeler. He did a ton of good for NASCAR and its fans throughout his life, and not many seemed to dislike him. But he represents the extreme commercial end of this balance board.
His argument demeaning point racers not selling tickets is also ironic, considering Dale Earnhardt probably sold more tickets for Wheeler than anybody else. He’s still more popular than any driver on the current grid 25 years after his death, in spite of being literally the greatest point racer of all time.
But back to today. Most of those new viewers NASCAR are trying to capture with the playoff format are not interested in the product NASCAR is putting out there. Look at ratings, look at total track attendance, and look at just about any numbers there are to look at.
Counting the Chase, there’s been some form of playoff system for 21 years now. NASCAR adopted the Latford system in 1975. If NASCAR had gotten to 1996 and most business metrics besides the TV contract were lower than they used to be, would they really have said things were going a-okay?
There aren’t many new people that NASCAR can reach that haven’t already been exposed to it in the past 21 years and decided not to watch it. If they did decide to stick around, they’d need an MBA in math to understand these playoff window pictures in most of these races now.
Has nobody watched the Jeff Dunham bit with his “Bubba J” puppet? “It’s a sport that’s easy to follow when you’re hammered”? Nobody actively thought much about the points picture during the race back then outside of maybe the final few races. Now, that’s all people talk about for months.
Last week, F1 announced they have signed an exclusive deal with Apple TV for the next five years. Most watching on ESPN have been told to either cough off the money for yet another new streaming service, or stop watching.
This is the moment that NASCAR can bounce back. This is where NASCAR can put their foot on the ground and declare that they are once again hard-nosed, hard-scrabble, unapologetic stock car racing. There are no playoffs, no eliminations, no sticks or balls. Finish well, score points, win a championship at the end of the season. Sound easy? Come and do it then.
At worst, are there going to be a huge swath of fans who stop watching because there are no playoffs? F1 ratings have shot up over the last several years in spite of actively thumbing their nose at a playoff format.
This is where NASCAR can take back those viewers who aren’t going to follow F1 to that streaming service that Ted Lasso and some MLB games are on.
Or... will Charlie Brown move the football once again, and will the playoffs be here to stay? If NASCAR wants to grow the sport, they need to put the actual sport back into it. Stop feeding people nothing but ice cream and sweets. They get too fat and ugly doing that. Give them some meat and veggies to chew on instead.