Will Jeff Gordon draw a penalty for dropping profanity on ESPN?
Jeff Gordon, normally one of the most restrained and thoughtful drivers in NASCAR, let his emotions get the better of him on Sunday night in Texas, ripping Brad Keselowski after an on-track incident that left Gordon deep in the pack and in danger of losing a championship.
After a brawl that included both teams, Gordon spoke to ESPN and offered this blunt assessment of Keselowski (language warning):
For a sport that involves drivers hurling themselves around the track at 200 miles per hour, NASCAR has long had a curiously Puritanical streak about naughty language. Drivers who can’t seem to string together three words without a curse manage to spool out eloquent, G-rated speeches on-camera thanking their sponsors and their team. And when they can’t, there are often consequences.
Longtime NASCAR viewers will recall that Dale Earnhardt Jr. got docked 25 points and fined $10,000 for his vocabulary misstep. Here’s Junior from back in 2004 after winning at Talladega and taking over (briefly) the points lead:
(Aside: boy, Junior has sanded the edges off his accent in the last decade, hasn’t he?)
It’s highly unlikely NASCAR will give Gordon any meaningful penalty, as times have changed significantly since the Junior violation. First, NASCAR received heavy criticism for taking points off the board of a driver in competition for a championship. Second, that was the same year of the infamous Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl. Third, this race was on cable, not broadcast TV, and if viewers can’t handle a curse word on a TV that routinely broadcasts disembowelings, cannibalism, and the like, well … some priorities may need to be realigned.
Most importantly, Gordon is about to head into one of the most critical races of his career. If NASCAR were to deduct points from a driver in the midst of a championship hunt for a minor, inconsequential violation, hurled just after a fight, well … the criticism would be unrelenting. NASCAR is loving the extra press now, but a hammer on Gordon for language would turn every bit of that attention to the negative.
____
Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter.
And keep up with Jay over on Facebook, too.
