On Sunday, ESPN will broadcast the last race of the 2014 season, which will also be the last race of ESPN’s contract. Next year, Fox and NBC will handle all NASCAR duties, and ESPN will move on to hardwood and grass rather than concrete and asphalt.
ESPN is the 800-pound gorilla in the broadcast sports space, and the fact that it will no longer telecast NASCAR will have a significant impact on the sport’s coverage. Rich Feinberg, ESPN vice president of production addressed fans’ initial concerns that the sport would be pushed to the sidelines since ESPN no longer has a financial stake in its promotion: “I don’t think you’ll see much of a change,” he said. “We obviously won’t be doing the races, but in terms of serving the interests of fans with our news and information coverage, we’re full steam ahead.” He noted that ESPN has signed several of its NASCAR regulars to new deals.
Earlier this week, ESPN regulars took a moment to discuss their favorite memories of broadcasting NASCAR and took a little pride in their work.
“I have to say, Alan Kulwicki’s championship win in that final race when he pulled into victory lane in 1992 in Atlanta, pulled there into the start‑finish line to be interviewed, and Richard Petty’s last race, that’s one of those moments I’ll never forget,” Dr. Jerry Punch said. “Alan driving the ‘Underbird,’ the young man who came from Wisconsin with, as we said back in those days, a pickup truck and a pocketful of dreams and chased his dream and became a NASCAR champion with very few resources. It was a day in which Davey Allison could have won it, Bill Elliott could have won it, and either one of those would have been great stories, but Kulwicki wins it and then we do the interview, and I turn and my producer in my earpiece says, ‘Now turn and say something, because we’re going to introduce Richard Petty.’ So I turned and introduced Richard Petty, and his rebuilt damaged race car comes out of the garage in Atlanta and makes one final lap and then comes down pit road … and I interview Richard, and I caught myself because he gets out of the car, and for the first time I saw tears in his eyes and going down his cheek, and they were on my cheeks because I realized how special that moment was. It just doesn’t get much better than that.”
Feinberg pointed out that ESPN offered both technical and conceptual innovations that have since become standard. “For us to be able to, throughout the Chase, show the second half of all Chase races, essentially the playoffs and the championship, without ever going to a full‑screen commercial week in and week out I think is an excellent example of how ESPN has tried to maintain its commitment, not only to NASCAR but to our fans in general,” he said.
“Taking the on board cameras high def, taking the cameras where you can see two different views coming out of a car at the same time instead of just one,” Allen Bestwick said. “That was not a cheap undertaking and it was not an easy one, but it was something that our company undertook and made successful.”
Leave it to Rusty Wallace, though, to put a bow on it all. “We’re all a close family,” he said of the ESPN crew. “We all get along good. We’ve all had our bumps in the road. We’ve all learned, and I wish we were continuing on, but we’re not.”
ESPN signs off after Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter.
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