Welcome to my 15th year writing about race broadcasts here at Frontstretch. It seems so crazy just thinking about it. For a lot of you, the fact that the offseason is now over is also crazy.
Last weekend saw the NASCAR Cup Series travel to Los Angeles for the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum. As you know, this year’s race was a bit of a wreckfest, with 16 cautions interrupting the 150-lap main event.
Over the past few years, the type of broadcast that you get from NASCAR’s TV partners has continued to diverge. While NBC Sports tends to provide a rather professional telecast, filled with people that are serious about in-depth analysis, FOX tends to go the more jocular route.
I’m not going to sit here and claim that sports broadcasts are too important to have fun, because that’s just silly. However, FOX’s tendency to not take things all that seriously at times seems to hurt them more often than it helps.
The “It’s A Match” piece, part of their pre-race coverage, was an example of the tone we saw for much of Sunday. The idea was to put some of the new teammates together to see how well they know each other. Apparently, it’s still quite early in their relationships, so they don’t know each other all that well.
The whole thing was rather botched. FOX described the piece as a Match Game knockoff. It wasn’t. This game show fanatic knew that it was a spoof of The Newlywed Game within two seconds. I know, it’s a small mistake, but the details are important. It shows whether you’re doing your homework.
Exhibition races are always going to produce some weird quirks, especially if proceedings get delayed. Sunday’s second Last Chance Qualifier also saw Gwen Stefani randomly show up in the broadcast booth with 16 laps to go. While I have nothing against Stefani (I admit to owning a couple of No Doubt albums and her first solo outing, Love. Angel. Music. Baby.), her appearance was out of place. It completely distracted the booth from the actual on-track competition.
It struck me as something that should have happened after the LCQs. Then again, after the LCQ, we were treated to the story of how Stefani and Clint Bowyer met.
What does Bowyer singing have to do with anything NASCAR? The whole story came off as silly and off the rails.
Aside from Stefani, there were some other drivers that came up to the booth during the races they…
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