That's Darren Rovell writing for CNBC about...NASCAR and its second straight year with a big ratings decline and the dreadful 10-race chase inspiring no one.
But it's worth reading because you can see so many parallels with professional golf, with a couple of major differences: its demographic isn't as wealthy and its tracks are not golf courses. So we've got that going for us.
They start with the economy, which is a valid excuse for the big attendance drops for NASCAR, which basically seek to host a huge crowd every Sunday in a different venue. But it doesn't hold water with TV. If people stay at home instead of go to the race, why aren't they tuning in?
Other excuses have included uniform starting times and races that are too long. Funny, the reason the organization changed start times is because different start times were hypothesized as one of the reasons for ratings declines. As for the length of races, I haven't seen much data that shows that people tune in for the final 20 laps or so to catch the end like that might late in the fourth quarter of an NBA game.
Then comes the rivalry argument or the lack of wins by important drivers. There just aren't many head to head battles people want to see, the reasoning goes. The truth is, the last great battle was Dale Earnhardt Sr. vs. Jeff Gordon and yet new fans came in droves in the five years after Dale Earnhardt died in 2001.