Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: Sports

The first sign of the end came one evening last fall during a Monday Night Football game on ESPN between Tampa Bay and Carolina.

ESPN, in its first year hosting Monday Night Football, got into a habit of bringing special guests into the booth during the second quarter of the games.

I was a little shocked when Mike Tirico announced that evening's guest, Jeff Gordon.

I thought, 'what the hell does a NASCAR driver have to do with a football game?' The answer should have been clear at the time, remembering the other guests who appeared earlier on the program, such as James Denton and Emmitt Smith. Not coincidentally, Denton stars on the ABC show "Desperate Housewives" and Smith appeared on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." Nothing like a little free advertising for ESPN's parent company.

And then it hit me.

ABC signed a deal with NASCAR in December 2005 for $4.48 billion over eight years.

Fast forward to Feb. 18. After spending the weekend in Superior visiting a friend, I returned home to my house in Eau Claire. Feb. 17-18 was the weekend of the NBA All-Star game. I hadn't watched TV all weekend, so I missed the only thing I really like about the NBA, the Slam Dunk Contest. One of my roommates told me Dwight Howard did some crazy dunk where he posted a sticker on the top of the backboard at some ridiculous height then deposited the ball in the basket. It was time for SportsCenter.

I turned the TV on just in time for the beginning of the show, fully expecting to see all-star game highlights.

To my chagrin, the entire first segment was devoted to the Daytona 500. Apparently some guy named Kevin Harvick won the race by three feet over Mark Martin.

Anybody have a bucket of paint? There might be some NASCAR fans that would love to watch it dry.

The second segment was worse. The ESPN anchors turned it over to the NASCAR experts. After seven or eight minutes of listening to their southern drawl I'd seen enough.

I remember the days when you could turn on ESPN and watch highlight after highlight of NHL and NBA action during the winter months. I don't even know what happened to NHL highlights on SportsCenter. It could have something to do with ESPN not having a contract with the NHL.

I probably shouldn't pick on ESPN because when I opened my Feb. 19 issue of Sports Illustrated, I found 20 pages of editorial content dedicated to a NASCAR preview.

Maybe it's the changing social climate of the country.

FOX was the station to broadcast the Daytona 500 and the race drew a 17.5 rating, according to the Nielsen ratings. The Vikings-Patriots Monday night game on Oct. 30 only had a rating of 11.9. Game 3 of the 2006 World Series drew a 10.2 rating.

ACNielsen and Nielsen Sports released a study Feb. 8 stating wine consumption is up 22 percent among NASCAR fans.

I can't envision 35-year-old men sitting around the television in Tennessee wearing Dale Earnhardt Jr. hats and sipping a glass of Pinot Grigio.

I really have a picture in my mind that Sacha Baron Cohen talked about in an interview on National Public Radio in January.

Cohen, more know for the characters he plays on his HBO TV show "Ali G" (Ali G, Borat and Bruno) had an interesting experience with NASCAR fans.

Cohen played a gay racecar driver from France in the 2005 movie "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." Cohen said the characters in the movie were introduced to crowd of over 200,000 NASCAR fans at an Alabama racetrack. When the movie's star Will Ferrell was introduced the crowd cheered. Cohen said when he was announced as a French driver, the crowd booed.

I hope the NASCAR fans don't drink any French wine.

What scares me is now the NASCAR culture is taking over the thing that we "real sports" fans love to do and that is watch "real sports."

It's only going to get worse. The ABC/ESPN television deal starts with 29 of NASCAR's Busch series races that will air on ESPN 2 followed by ABC/ESPN's coverage of the second half of the Nextel Cup. ABC will air 11 races and ESPN will air six.

Are we going lose Sunday afternoon baseball?

The most disheartening thing to me was ESPN's Top 10 Plays on that Sunday I returned from Superior.

In all the years I have watched Sportscenter, never once have I seen a NASCAR highlight as No. 1, and Sunday it happened.

My hope is that ESPN will find out quickly that NASCAR hurts their ratings; unfortunately I don't think it will.

NASCAR may be creeping from the South to all corners of the country. It's just a matter of time before everyone is wearing either a Budweiser or Miller Lite racing hat. And that will be the big rivalry in the future of sports; not Yankees-Red Sox, Duke-North Carolina basketball or Ohio St.-Michigan football, but Dale Earnhardt Jr.-Kyle Busch.

I still haven't seen the clip of the crazy dunk Dwight Howard pulled off.

Halter is a junior print journalism major and sports editor of The Spectator.

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