Another Season is here… and it always makes me pensive. 2009 thankfully came and ended a long arduous decade full of many changes to a sport that a fan base, whose roots go back over 50 years, probably never thought they'd ever see.
As the first decade of the 21st century wound down, it was continually highlighted by one story that overrode everyone's minds still nine years later: Dale Earnhardt's death in 2001. How could we forget? We can’t. (I hear those non- Dale fans saying: “the Dale fans won’t let us!” That’s the way fanship goes.) On the cusp of a new decade, post Y2K, post-millennial fears, scares, and apocalyptic speculations and the 2000 domination of the Ford freight train races of Daytona and Talladega, February 2001 brought us our worst nightmare: the loss of the sports’ greatest star and driver. Don McLean's old song "American Pie" sings of all the changes in music and the world, and the "day the music died"... I'd venture to say, February 18, 2001 is the day NASCAR died. And then it spent pretty much the rest of the decade trying to resuscitate itself.
The heart of the sport stopped that day. The impact is undeniable. Kevin Harvick came out of the gate with the fire the sport needed to revive it, but the powers-that-be squashed that really quick, denying him the chance to champion Richard Childress Racing early on in his career as he should have. The results have been obviously detrimental to that organization both in personnel morale and media/fan perception. Then, seasons later after many others showed they had personality and fire, too AND that fans really do like that, NASCAR encouraged the drivers to become more themselves again... but once burned, very wary.
