We’ll find out this weekend who will be in the SuperBowl for the 2001 NFL season. On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Steelers take on the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game, the first of the afternoon.
That’ll be followed by the Philadelphia Eagles and St. Louis Rams playing for the NFC title. The winner goes to the Super Dome in New Orleans in two weeks.
Presumably, though we haven’t heard for sure, the NFL somehow convinced a Louisiana auto dealers’ association to reschedule its convention for another date. You may remember that the NFL season was interrupted for a week by the terrorist attacks of September 11th. That set back the date for the SuperBowl for a week, which was the date for the auto dealers’ convention.
I would rather they just did away with the extra week between the conference championships and the SuperBowl so we would only have to listen to one week of hype, instead of two.
I suppose that’s too much to ask.
We’ll find ourselves rooting for the Steelers over the Patriots. I tend to root for Pittsburgh when the Browns are not involved.
I also don’t think the Patriots deserve to be there…the Raiders do. Brady had tucked the ball back in and it was a fumble, for crying out loud!
We really don’t care too much who wins the NFC title, but I suppose, Donovan McNabb will make the difference and the Eagles will win.
With the SuperBowl on the horizon, can the racing season be far behind?
The focus of the racing industry in the U.S. will be on Daytona next month, a month which winds up with NASCAR’s big event, the Daytona 500.
Recently, NASCAR president Mike Helton spoke at something called the International Sport Summit, in New York City. Helton was predictably enthusiastic about his organization’s prospects.
In an Associated Press article, Helton said that NASCAR now has 75 million fans, up from 12 million a year ago. He said that hardcore fans have grown from 30 million to 40 million. He defined hardcore as watching at least nine hours of racing each week.
Helton attributed the growth in fan base to his organization’s deal with NBC and Fox. Last season there were 25 NASCAR races on network TV. There were ten the year before.
NASCAR averaged a 5.3 rating and 13 share for the 19 races carried on Fox and FX and a 3.9 rating and ten share for the 20 races on NBC and TNT. The AP article said the numbers were higher than expected.
In spite of that, the networks lost money carrying NASCAR, but they expected to do so in the first year of the contract.
There is a Cassandra, however, Sports Researcher Richard Luker. Luker knows a little about the sports marketing business. He founded the ESPN-CHILTON Sports Poll and now is with Leisure Intelligence Group.
Two years ago, speaking at the International Sports Summit, Luker claimed that interest in NASCAR was on the wane. He told the AP he hasn’t changed his mind.
Luker said that NASCAR still doesn’t have the fan numbers it had in 1998. He admitted they were the only sport which showed improvement last year but that the gains are negated by a couple of deep hits it took in the years before.
Luker said that that NASCAR has benefited from its appearance on network TV, but he said it is not fair to compare its TV ratings with those of other sports. He said that NASCAR’s ratings for one event a week are apples to the oranges of other sports, like basketball and baseball, which air several times each week.
He also disputes Helton’s claim that NASCAR is second only to the NFL for TV ratings and live audience. Luker says that it is more like sixth or seventh the way he looks at the numbers.