NASCAR risks its future by turning against drivers and team members who protest

Television ratings continue to decline on a near-weekly basis, attendance remains flat, and NASCAR is very much struggling to recapture the interest of a sporting public no longer enthralled by stock-car racing at the highest level.

The sport is at crossroads and searching for a way to again be relevant. Among the many pressing issues is a fan base skewing older, with a younger generation of sports fans virtually ignoring NASCAR. Everyone within the industry recognizes NASCAR must expand its fan base and do a better job of attracting younger and more diverse followers of the sport.

However, any recent progress on this front was undone on Sunday by two old-guard team owners, who said they would fire any employee who refused to stand for the national anthem. Richard Childress said he would send any employee home on a Greyhound bus, while Richard Petty, NASCAR’s “King,” expressed a similar parochial viewpoint.

“Anybody that don’t stand up for that ought to be out of the country. Period,” Petty said, via USA Today. “If they don’t appreciate where they’re at … what got them where they’re at? The United States.”

As it has done so often, NASCAR again demonstrated how difficult it will be to capture the interest of a new generation of fans, thanks to an insular mindset where many of those within the industry are either incapable or unwilling to accept values other than their own. This was then reinforced when President Donald Trump tweeted his admiration for NASCAR and its fans Monday morning for taking a stand against those who refuse to stand for the national anthem. As if stymieing a person’s First Amendment rights was something that should be commended.

Fair or not, NASCAR is now indelibly linked with a president whose platform is based on hateful, insensitive, and intolerant rhetoric. When NASCAR CEO Brian France publicly endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign during a 2016 rally there was blowback, which eventually subsided. The same occurred when NASCAR was reluctant to disassociate itself with the Confederate flag, despite it serving as a symbol of hate and oppression to many.

Now it will be a difficult, if not impossible, for NASCAR to separate itself from the comments made by Childress and Petty on Sunday. While NFL players and owners locked arms in a show of unity and the majority of teams released statements condemning Trump’s remarks on Friday — when Trump said “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired. He’s fired” in regards to how NFL owners should handle any player that chooses to protest during the anthem — NASCAR team owners essentially sided with the president.

The sports landscape is full of more progressive leagues where tolerance and acceptance are appreciated qualities, and yet NASCAR continues to lag like a car down a cylinder. It wants to market itself toward younger fans, just not at the expense of upsetting those who have followed the sport for decades ... even though many within that older demographic are resistant to welcome anyone who doesn’t share similar beliefs.

In a sport where sponsorship is everything, and teams are struggling more and more to find sponsors, divisiveness is the last thing NASCAR needs as it attempts to sell itself to Fortune 500 corporations. Companies will not want to be linked to a sport where exclusion is readily accepted, a sport full of individuals who squelch opinions that exist outside their own narrow worldview.

NASCAR continues to present itself as an old boys club where anyone who is different will likely encounter scorn and condemnation. Petty and Childress said it themselves; NASCAR is a place where any form of silent protest during the national anthem would be met with a pink slip.

And instead of responding emphatically, NASCAR released a milquetoast statement Monday afternoon saying little; a halfhearted attempt at taking a stand without really doing so. Nowhere does it address the consequences of what would happen were a driver or crew member to stage a silent protest during pre-race ceremonies, which calls for every team to line up on pit road during the playing of the national anthem.

“Sports are a unifying influence in our society, bringing people of differing backgrounds and beliefs together,” NASCAR said in a statement. “Our respect for the national anthem has always been a hallmark of our pre-race events. Thanks to the sacrifices of many, we live in a country of unparalleled freedoms and countless liberties, including the right to peacefully express one’s opinion.”

The lone public voice of reason amid NASCAR’s near-universal lack of awareness outside its own intolerant bubble continues to be Dale Earnhardt Jr., the sport’s 14-time most popular driver who again expressed compassion and understanding for those who feel oppressed.

Even before NASCAR bumbled its way trying to remove the Confederate flag from its tracks following the shooting deaths of nine African-Americans by a white gunman inside a South Carolina church in June 2015, Earnhardt was out front saying the flag was “offensive to an entire race. It belongs in the history books and that’s about it.”

And when a counter-protester was killed during a violent white supremacist rally last month, Earnhardt was again the lone person within NASCAR to publicly speak out. First on social media and later during a press conference, he offered a heartfelt summarization on the tumult overtaking the country.

Unfortunately, Earnhardt appears to be the exception within the industry, one in which Petty and Childress are seemingly the voices of the majority. That’s both a sad indictment of NASCAR in the present and a bleak outlook for its future.