Well Fed, Minus Scoops

Food dominates actual journalism at NASCAR Media Tour.

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"Two more questions, then it's buffet time."

They come by plane, train and automobile and from all four corners of the media earth. Reporters, columnists, bloggers, Twitterers (did I just make that up?) and more than a few talking heads that look and sound like Ron Burgundy and Wes Mantooth.

Every January they descend on the Charlotte area for the annual preseason NASCAR Media Tour in search of scoops, quotes and free food … which are distributed in reverse order when it comes to quantity.

That hasn't always been the case.

In the beginning, as in the 1990's, race teams made major preseason announcements during the Media Tour, which started as a day or two of loosely tied-together press conferences involving a couple dozen writers from newspapers scattered mainly throughout the southeast.

When the NASCAR boom hit in the last half of the decade, the Tour swelled to a nomadic herd of 50, 100 or more media types and grew to include TV crews from ESPN, TNN (R.I.P.) and an additional van-driven army of local sportscasters, who began appearing at the biggest announcements. Soon the Charlotte Motor Speedway organized it all into an official event, including a fleet of giant buses that moved from race shop to race shop, allowing writers to take lengthy, free-lunch-induced naps between pressers.

The Media Tour officially became a media circus in 1999. It was during that now nearly weeklong itinerary that Dale Earnhardt hosted his first big event at the all-new black marble and gold leaf-trimmed headquarters of Dale Earnhardt Incorporated, aka the Garage Mahal.

Big E relentlessly pestered the outside company that he'd brought in to set up TV-friendly lighting and a curtained presentation area, designed to unveil a new car to be driven by his son, Dale Junior, in the Winston Cup Series. The CEO of Budweiser and even the Clydesdales were involved. The Intimidator tested the sound system over and over. He asked for a TV camera and a monitor to be set up so that he could see how his new place and new car would look on that night's evening news. And, after the "Countdown to E Day" revelation had finished, he grabbed a pair of ESPN TV producers and asked to see their footage, because he wanted to make sure "this deal came off looking as big time I wanted it to."

That same year, writers and TV reporters left every press conference with armloads of goodies, from CD cases to diecast cars to ratchet sets. This was in addition to three hot meals a day, most eaten at mile-long picnic tables set up on race shop floors. Lunch was provided by State Fair Corn Dogs (proud sponsor of the No. 30 Pontiac Grand Prix), dinner was cooked by Geoff Bodine Racing and breakfast was whipped up by, yes, your friends at the Miller Brewing Company.

Along the way, those teams also broke news.

There were last minute driver signings, new paint schemes, new crew chiefs and team owners would even talk smack about rivals, especially when it came to Ford vs. Chevy. All of this took place in the midst of Daytona 500 testing, and the speed charts sent from the beach back to Charlotte always managed to elicit a response worth printing or reporting. As in, "I saw so-and-so was fastest today at Daytona. Clearly he's cheating … "

This year's Sprint Media Tour has had the misfortune of no Daytona testing as a potential galvanizing force and also taking place during some big news event up in Washington you may have heard about. Any chatter about manufacturers is more worthy of CNBC than the WWE, and the only smack talk comes from bitter beat writers bemoaning the decline in quality of recent free gifts.

While the Media Tour does still have its moments (the Richard Petty Motorsports announcement was a totally unexpected news bomb, don't let any motorsports writer tell you otherwise) it has merely, some would say sadly, slowly become just another part of the week-in, week-out routine of the NASCAR season.

Still, the Tour draws a large number of TV producers and keyboard bangers, though tough economic times, especially in the newspaper industry, have certainly had a visible effect. They still get up each morning, board the bus and take their seats in front of raceshop stages to listen to owners, drivers and sponsor reps rattle away.

But the big breaking news stories and USDA-worthy juicy quotes have taken a backseat to routine. It's not the Media Tour's fault. It's our own fault. Today's never-ending news cycle no longer allows a secret to be kept long enough to spring it on everyone during the January tour. Car unveilings and driver signings are announced during the previous season, sometimes a full year in advance.

Back in the day, team owner Richard Childress would have waited until Monday night's Media Tour dinner (free Jack Daniels!) to trot out his plans to field a fourth car with Casey Mears behind the wheel and JD on the hood. Instead, he announced it last August at Bristol. Monday night was merely a gathering to say, "We're looking forward to the 2009 season." Don't get me wrong, a good time was had by all (did I mention the free Jack Daniels?), but as we warned you earlier, there was plenty of grub and virtually zero scoop.

While the Media Tour does still have its moments (the Richard Petty Motorsports announcement was a totally unexpected news bomb, don't let any motorsports writer tell you otherwise) it has slowly, some would say sadly, become just another part of the week-in, week-out routine of the NASCAR season. It's no different than travelling to Daytona the Wednesday before the Bud Shootout, scrambling to catch the last flight out of Detroit after a Michigan race or listening to everyone gripe about traffic and rain.

But at least the food is good.

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