The Wussification of Sports, and Earnhardt vs. Petty
NASCAR now takes the winter off until testing begins at Daytona in January –
although the term taking the winter off is relative. GM teams have tested at
Homestead and some Talladega testing may come soon for Ford and Dodge teams;
Kentucky Motor Speedway will also see extensive testing by Winston Cup efforts,
primarily by Ford teams.
While NASCAR teams test and retool for 2003, many of their members have been
watching and/or listening to NFL games on Sundays, and no doubt some will be
debating the merits of the recent controversy over Warren Sapp. The burly
defensive tackle for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers laid down Green Bay Packers
offensive tackle Chad Clifton in the Bucs’ 21-7 defeat of the Packers, but the
story of the game was the severity of injury suffered by Clifton, who had to be
taken off the field on a stretcher, and the post game confrontation between Sapp
and Packers head coach Mike Sherman – "I just went up to Warren and told
him I didn’t appreciate the lick he put on Clifton and the joviality that
existed afterward when a guy’s laying on the ground with numbness in his legs
and fingers, I just thought that wasn’t appropriate for any NFL player,"
Sherman said1 – a confrontation now famous for Sapp’s livid demand for Sherman
to don pads and helmet and take him on directly.
The hit did not draw any flag, but the unfortunate outcome prompted
considerable criticism of Sapp – notably livid criticisms on some sports radio
shows. The controversy became such that the NFL’s subsequent announcement that
there would be no fine of Sapp nor of Sherman became bigger news than most such
incidents usually become.
The criticisms come amid a continuing controversy that has been fanned over
the years by such commentators as Keith Olbermann, who in 2000 devoted a large
segment of one episode of his short-lived solo sports show to discussing the
issue of QB safety – just how dangerous is football becoming? Warren Sapp has
been singled out most notably because of the ferocity in his play, and also for trash talk
to opponents he’s just tackled.
Football is of course a rough game, and there has also been an issue over
fines for uniform infractions being greater than fines for vicious
helmet-to-chest hits. The Warren Sapp controversy, though, has been overblown,
because the hit in question was a clean hit that had an unfortunate outcome. It
is reminiscent of the hit the following Monday Night that broke Philadelphia Eagles’ QB Koy Detmer’s elbow – it was a clean hit,
albeit Detmer got hit in the
legs and broke his elbow bracing for hitting the ground.
The roughness of football is an undeniable area of its appeal, and that will
not change. While a proper balance is needed to avoid excessive injuries, the
Sapp controversy is a case of overkill.
Which leads to the NHL, which has suffered in television ratings in recent
years as the league has cracked down harder on hits under Gary Bettman, a
process that many feel is robbing the league "of its color and
personality."2
While fighting is admittedly excessive in hockey, at the same time a
substantial amount of toughness is being weeded out of the game. Checking has
become more penalty-prone and has also declined of recent, though part of this
has to do with having to relearn the "art" of body checking. Certainly
this body-to-body contact aspect is an essential aspect of player toughness,
"the raw edge this contact sport requires," as Damien Cox puts it.3
The NHL, though, might be wise to ease up on some of this effort. The mild
wussification of the league has been a factor in declining ratings, and
toughness should never be drained out of the sport; players with very high
thresholds of pain should always be held in good esteem, "as prototypical
NHLers."4 When one contrasts many NHL games with many AHL games, one often
sees in the minors a greater threshold of toughness (and higher scoring) that
makes hockey truly great.
The issue of toughness is not alien to racing. NASCAR has seen its ratings
skyrocket in the two years of the FOX-NBC television package, and has seen more
different winners in the past two seasons than ever before.
Yet as this has happened, the sport has also seen a noticeable decline in its
threshold of toughness, exacerbated by the zeal for safety since Dale
Earnhardt’s death. Driver bravery is noticeably weaker today than in the past,
driver toughness has also declined, and tactics that are legitimate are now seen
by excessive sensitivity as wrong – the yellow line rule at Daytona and
Talladega being one egregious example.
The other egregious example is the continued lobbying for lower down force.
Now you might think lower down force would make for greater driver bravery, but
experience has shown that the opposite is the case. NASCAR has halted planned
follow-up testing at Daytona of lower-down force cars due to a combination of
time and resource constraints.5
One piece said that "perhaps the most promising (package tested) was a
car with a raised front valence and reduced rear blade. The package reduced
total down force and forced the drivers to work the throttle on a motor with a
larger restrictor plate."6 This was written, though this same source
acknowledged at the time that this package in fact made the cars "out of
control" and that such testing had to renege on reducing down force to
improve stability.7
That this retrograde route is even alive is a sign of weakness on the part of
many. Certainly the rules ought to be bringing the cars closer together, not
making them unraceable.
The decline in toughness in racing is by no means an issue exclusive to the
last two seasons. Like so many other areas, it has been a long-building issue
spanning decades.
It is also relevant to one of the more bitter debates among fans – the debate
over who was the better among the sport’s only seven-time champions. It is an
issue reignited in the responses received for my years-best-and-worst piece of
recent, and warrants examination.
Richard Petty won seven Winston Cup titles and 200 races. Dale Earnhardt tied
Petty with seven titles, and had 76 wins. The debate over the relative merits of
this record began almost as soon as Earnhardt had won his seventh title in 1994,
and have been exacerbated over remarks Petty made after Earnhardt’s death.
It needs to be noted that Petty and Earnhardt themselves had this kind of
debate over the years, so the debate itself isn’t exactly alien to the sides
involved.
The toughness of the circumstances in which the two men won their titles is
the primary issue determining who is the worthier holder of the crown of greatest,
and often cited in Earnhardt’s favor is the level of competition he faced.
There is, though, a lot more to it. It has often been said that Petty had the
best racecars, the best funding, etc. and raced for the championship against
only one or two teams that could run the full schedule. While it is true that
Petty in the 1960s raced against fields where factory cars often did not run the
full schedule, it was by no means because of greater resources. On the contrary,
Petty’s team was less well-endowed than the stereotype portrays. Petty’s fights
with Chrysler over paucity of assistance throughout the 1960s are now well-known
(little appreciated is that Mopar cut its backing in half for the 1967 season),
and tire testing for Goodyear and Firestone was often the only way the Petty
team could earn enough money to race.
As for competition, the most striking comparison lies in the overall
toughness of Petty’s rivals versus those of Earnhardt. Petty faced as many
Hall-of-Fame drivers as one can imagine, and was able to beat the all and finish
second in Grand National points three times in his first five years, once to Rex
White, twice to Joe Weatherly, before beating Ned Jarrett, David Pearson, and
Billy Wade for his first title in 1964. Petty won more races than almost all
five drivers combined in those five seasons.
Petty did this amid the most trying circumstances of his career – having to
own the race team, build cars, build the shop, and race after Lee Petty’s
grievous 1961 injury. While his rivals were mostly drivers (some, like Rex
White, also owned their cars), Richard and Maurice Petty were "100%
everything," as Petty once put it.
Petty also did not have quite the equipment edge often claimed of him in the
1970s. The decade was a nightmare for Chrysler racing, as parts supply dried up
almost as soon as the factory pulled out. Most teams went to Chevrolets, where
parts could be acquired at good prices from local dealers; Petty and Harry Hyde,
NASCAR’s other Mopar stalwart of the ’70s, were scouring junkyards by 1976 for
parts, and in fact this junkyard search began even before 1976. Far from being
at an advantage in resources, Petty was quite handicapped, running Mopars that
were harder to maintain than Chevrolets, and when he did switch to Chevy in
latter 1978, he had to learn cars his competition had already mastered over
numerous seasons.
Ken Squier once said, "Lead changes tell the story of why this kind of
racing provides the ultimate in competition." In this area Petty had vastly
tougher competition on a more consistent basis than Earnhardt. 60 lead changes
in a race was a common number in Petty’s 1970s heyday, and for the first six
seasons of Earnhardt’s career were not that uncommon, but lead changes declined
steadily and quite sharply during the 1980s.
Petty also overcame serious health issues – serious injury in 1969 and 1970,
T-bone wrecks at Bristol in 1974 and again in ’76, then again in 1977, severe
stomach illness throughout the 1970s, leading to 1976 surgery and removal of 40%
of his stomach in 1978, neck breakage in 1980, foot breakage in 1982, and
injuries through the second half of the 1980s, such as his severe crash at
Daytona in 1986.
Earnhardt, in contrast, was remarkably injury-free in his career – he
suffered serious injuries at Pocono in 1979 and again in 1982, but it wasn’t
until 1996 at Talladega that Earnhardt suffered the first injuries that really
hobbled his driving. He then had his still-mysterious blackout spell at
Darlington in 1997, but aside from this he remained remarkably injury-free until
his death.
It has often been said that Dale Earnhardt could handle a loose racecar
better than anyone, but watching Petty race, the #43 was for years substantially
looser than anything Earnhardt ever raced (Petty’s Dodges were often called The
Petty Alligator Tail because the tail snapped so prominently), and Petty fought
for the lead with such racecars and won with them. One of the best available
examples was the National 500 at Charlotte in 1974, where Petty fought for the
lead all day despite skating through the corners virtually every lap.
Earnhardt was sometimes called The Dominator, but in comparisons with Petty,
some stats stand out – Petty won ten times at Daytona versus Earnhardt’s three
wins (Earnhardt acolytes will count #3’s Shootout, 125, IROC, and Grand National
300 wins in his Daytona total), eleven times at Rockingham versus three for
Earnhardt, 15 apiece at North Wilkesboro and Martinsville, and so forth.
Earnhardt outranks Petty in wins at Atlanta (nine to six), Talladega (ten to
two), and Charlotte (five to four). But in seasons, Petty holds a big edge –
Petty won the most races in a season seven times – Earnhardt did that trick only
twice, and he dominated 1990 with nine wins, yet needed Mark Martin’s penalty to
win the championship – ironically, the only other time a points penalty decided
the Winston Cup title was 1950, when Lee Petty was DQed in mid-season for
running an unsanctioned race.
Earnhardt certainly did not have anything particularly easy – overcoming
poverty to become NASCAR’s top rookie in 1979, he did so with a team, Rod
Osterlund Motor Ventures, that was financed out of the team owner’s own pocket.
Even when he joined Richard Childress for good in 1984, Childress, though by
then vastly stronger an organization from Earnhardt’s 11 races with the #3 in
1981, was working out of "an old (garbage) shop," as engine builder at
the time Lou Larosa put it, until moving to their present locale in 1986.
Certainly Earnhardt made moves in traffic that were stunning. Petty also made
such moves, and very often.
But perhaps the ultimate difference between the two was in personality.
Petty’s legacy encompasses several areas, but one of the biggest was in
interplay with fans. Petty’s fan interaction was so famous that sponsors
basically require drivers to behave like Petty did with fans. Years of fan
letters in racing papers showed a more mixed record for Earnhardt in that
regard, and that he never won Most Popular Driver until Bill Elliott took
himself out of the running in 2001 should say something. Having lived through
the decades where booing Earnhardt was almost a prerequisite for racing, one may
be struck to see fans cheering for him in later years.
One needs to better look back at the sport’s history to see bigger pictures
than one might see. Certainly Earnhardt vs. Petty shows a need to see more and
more of the past, and properly, to find the proper answers to questions one
might ask.