Nobody asked me but:<\/i><\/b> <\/p>\n
The NASCAR media world is full of lists
\nthese days. The Sporting News,<\/i> however, has the best list especially for
\nNASCAR observers. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s the publication\u2019s TSN Power 100,
\nthe most powerful people in sports. At the top of the list is NFL Commissioner
\nPaul Tagliabue , not a
\nsurprise. New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner is second because of his
\ncoming entree into media with his Yankees Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network
\nwhich will allow him to pocket the ad revenues now going to the Madison Square
\nGarden Network or anyone else who wins the bidding for Yankee broadcasts. <\/p>\n
Third is Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News
\nCorp., and the man who signed the checks for $8.5 billion in rights fees for
\nMLB, the NFL and NASCAR through 2008. Next Mark McCormack, the mega super agent
\nwho founded International Management Group 40 years ago and changed the face
\n(and mirror, for that matter) of sports forever. <\/p>\n
Now here\u2019s the hit! Number five is
\nNASCAR Board Chairman Bill France, Jr. Ahead of people like: NBA Commissioner
\nDavid Stern in sixth, U.S. President George Bush in ninth, NHL Commissioner Gary
\nBettman in tenth and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig who\u2019s irrevocably tied to
\nPlayer\u2019s Union Executive Director Donald Fehr in 14th. <\/p>\n
Not only is France in the top five, but he\u2019s
\nlight years ahead of NASCAR President Mike Helton in 45th. <\/p>\n
Still, the strength of NASCAR on the
\nnation\u2019s sports horizon is impressive with six people directly tied to the
\norganization in the Power 100. They include:<\/p>\n
Bill France Jr., in fifth<\/p>\n
Helton in 45th<\/p>\n
NASCAR VP of Corporate Communications
\n Jim Hunter, 52nd<\/p>\n
NASCAR Vice President George Pyne,
\n 66th<\/p>\n
NASCAR driver and budding icon Jeff
\n Gordon, 68th<\/p>\n
DEI Chairwoman Teresa Earnhardt, 95th\n<\/ul>\n
Jeff Gordon is the only driver and Theresa
\nEarnhardt is one of only four women on the list. <\/p>\n
These are people directly tied to NASCAR
\nand not including the Anheuser-Busch presence with group vice-president of
\nmarketing and wholesale operations August Busch IV and his vice-president of
\nglobal media and sports marketing Anthony Ponturo. They control the purse
\nstrings of several sports, especially NASCAR, from the seventh starting spot in
\nrow four! They have the power to get France\u2019s undivided attention. Few others
\ncan say that! <\/p>\n
TSN\u2019s Power 100 list will create
\nincredible blather about who should be where in the rundown, but it does
\nseparate out a core of people who direct sports decisions in America. It also
\nimplies that the NASCAR voice is among the strongest ones out there and the only
\none from the motorsports world. <\/p>\n
When the list appeared, the sports talk
\nworld was aghast at the presence of NASCAR, especially France\u2019s finish in the
\ntop five. Forget the fact that he\u2019s the patriarch of a family that OWNS the
\nbrand, the organization and influences 12 of the nation\u2019s top racing
\nfacilities that are owned by a company The Family controls. According to The
\nSporting News:<\/i> "NASCAR is the paragon of vertical integration. Here\u2019s
\nall you need to know about its profit margins: One estimate of France\u2019s
\npersonal wealth has him looking back at $1 billion." That\u2019s largely money
\nmade from racin\u2019! <\/p>\n
Now, here\u2019s my argument: is it good to
\nhave that much power in the seat of one man? Certainly it\u2019s efficient.
\nBillions of bucks stop at his desk! But he alone has the power to determine
\nwhere those bucks go after that. He often doesn\u2019t exercise that power alone
\nbut what he doesn\u2019t influence in the ever-expanding NASCAR universe certainly
\nwants his blessing when the decision is made anyway. <\/p>\n
In many matters of motorsports, Bill
\nFrance, Jr. has more power than NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. To put it into
\nperspective, imagine if Tagliabue owned: the Cowboys, the Packers, the Bears,
\nthe Rams and the 49ers, the stadiums they played in and controlled the
\nscheduling surrounding their games and the negotiations surrounding the
\ntelevision contracts that control when their games are seen. And that would be
\njust a part of his power! <\/p>\n
We haven\u2019t talked about the fact he
\nwould own or control the NFL brand, everything it appears on and every way it\u2019s
\nseen. He\u2019d also be making a power play to control every image of the NFL,
\nevery spoken word of the NFL, every written word surrounding the NFL and every
\nplace the letters NFL are seen! Do you think the country would let Paul
\nTagliabue have that much power? <\/p>\n
What happened when Bill Gates assumed a
\nfraction of that vertical power? <\/p>\n
That\u2019s only part of the power resting
\nunder the control of Bill France, Jr. We haven\u2019t even mentioned the fact that,
\nat least, five others on this list of Power 100 don\u2019t make a decision
\nregarding their own business interests unless they run it by France at some
\npoint in the process. There are others who, at least, consider his influence
\nwhen they make a decision regarding sponsorship, schedules, broadcast times or
\nproduct placement\/marketing. <\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t to demonize Bill France. His
\nFamily built a brand literally from the dirt of the Carolina hills and the sand
\nof a Florida beach. It did it in less than 50 years. And it did it against the
\nodds of regionalism, activity discrimination and media factionalism that
\ndismissed their product as inconsequential when weighed against the more
\ntraditional passtimes of greater interest to a nation. <\/p>\n
Still, with brilliant business decisions
\nand, frankly, a death grip hold on the purse strings, The France Family built a
\nbrand that\u2019s envied by every other sports marketing entity on he planet,
\nincluding The Olympics. <\/p>\n
I still believe that\u2019s too big of a
\nfootprint for one man to have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nobody asked me but: The NASCAR media world is full of lists these days. The Sporting News, however, has the best list especially for NASCAR observers. It\u2019s the publication\u2019s TSN Power 100, the most powerful people in sports. At the top of the list is NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue , not a surprise. New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}