I got into NASCAR in 1997 when some college friends of mine held their annual Daytona 500 party in our house in Washington, DC. All of us hailed from the North and came to NASCAR fandom far from its traditional Southern origin. Yet there we were, drinking to any Dick Trickle reference or any yellow flag. We never really saw it as redneckish, but we knew the sport was much more popular across the Potomac River and 40 miles to the south. Most of us saved up and went to the various races within an easy drive from DC: Dover, Richmond, Martinsville, even Bristol or Charlotte. It seemed strange that the fastest growing sport had several of its premier tracks within close proximity to DC, yet the sports page barely paid it any attention. Nevertheless, there we were, the great new base of the fastest growing sport in America.

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Why did us Yankees become avid NASCAR fans? I suppose it was different for each one of us, but once it caught on among one, we all jumped in. For me, it was the Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary of NASCAR issue that pulled me in. I was thoroughly fascinated by the moonshiner roots of the sport, and my increasing interest in US history (3 years before I went to grad school to study it) convinced me that NASCAR was an odd but intriguing part of American culture. At the same time I was busy repairing the parking brake cable on my 1980 Volvo so it could pass the DC safety inspection. Toiling away on my then-girlfriend's (and now wife) backyard driveway impressed upon me the true genious and grit of automotive mechanical work. I followed the pitstops and the garage shows more than the races at first. But then I settled in and became a Jeff Burton fan - then the #99 Exide Battery Ford car for Roush Racing: all because he was from Virginia (like me) and because he seemed like a stand-up, yet untrendy guy. I still pull for Burton even though his number, team, car and sponsor have changed. But hey, that's NASCAR. Loyal fans to the bone.

If there is one man who made the once regional sport popular to folks like me, it's Bill France, Jr. Nobody tranformed the sport of the Southern Piedmont into America's Fastest Growing Sport more than France, Jr., the son of the founder of NASCAR. It really becomes apparent when you watch tapes of the old races; TONS of rebel flags (the Darlington race was called the Rebel 500 at the time, before it became the Southern 500), half-filled stadiums, poor TV angles, etc. It was a poor regional sport for a region that generally eschewed professional sports. But just as the 1970s and 1980s saw the nationalization of the South (i.e. the Sun Belt), it also witnessed the Southernization of American culture, and NASCAR was a key component to that trend. Dale Earnhardt became not just a Southern folk hero, but a working man's hero in Michigan and New Hampshire and California too.

I'm currently in the middle of Neal Thompson's excellent "Driving With the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR." Thompson certainly casts Bill France, Sr., father of the just deceased Jr., as a less-than-admirable shyster. France Sr. comes across as a rank hypocrite, willing to exploit the springed-up bootlegger cars to get the good-ole-boys from Georgia in the seats while publicly banning them in order to make the sport more "family friendly." Thompson praises the purists from Dawsonville, GA like Lloyd Seay, Roy Hall and Raymond Parks over the media-conscious France. It's almost like reading about the hardcore honky-tonkers like Cash and Haggard vs. the slick Nashville producers in the 1960s. Clearly, the good guys were the outsiders, even though it was the insider machine that grew the entity.

Bill France, Jr. clearly inherited his father's penchant for promotion. And his thirst for nationalizing the sport - epitomized by the slick Californian Jeff Gordon - created a huge backlash among the sport's southeastern base. But what resulted was a perfect sort of cultural rivalry: between the fierce, stoic, unadulterated competitor in Dale Earnhardt and the smiling, pretty-boy Rainbow Warrior Gordon. The interal rivalry was perfect for the sport, generating gendered and generational splits among families that only fed the growing phenomenon.

Like the NHL, NASCAR has permanently moved beyond its geographic base. The closing of the North Wilkesboro track and the construction of new megatracks in Kansas City and Chicago only solidified the sport's nationalization. Plans have been in the works for years for a track in the New York area. Bill France, Jr.'s expansionist vision has been embraced from top to bottom. For better or worse, the sport of NASCAR would never have been what it is today if not for Bill France Jr. Rest in Peace.

For Terry Blount's take:
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