THE ITHACAN

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The Student News Site of Ithaca College

THE ITHACAN

The Student News Site of Ithaca College

THE ITHACAN

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Your donation will support The Ithacan's student journalists in their effort to keep the Ithaca College and wider Ithaca community informed. Your contribution will allow us to purchase equipment and cover our annual website hosting costs.

The Daytona 500 is on tonight…

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But do you care? I love sports and I can honestly say I will be fully engrossed in my homework at 7pm tonight when the Daytona 500 starts.

I used to have matchbox cars that I’d race around my floor during each and every Nascar race. The day before a race I’d set up a qualifying round where I’d time each car on my made up course to set the lineup for the real deal the next day. I still don’t have many friends today.

The point is, what happened to Nascar? Does it matter to people? I once cared about the sport and I surely do not anymore. And I guess by “people”, I must mean the Northeastern population of the United States because I haven’t been exposed to how intense racing seemingly is in the Southern part of the nation. I might just not be cultured enough to be able to grasp the magnitude of Nascar racing, but from my sheltered point of view, it’s dead.

I chose that picture for a reason: I feel the “people” who do watch Nascar only watch because they want to see violence, they want to see cars smashing into each other. The actual fans have more profound reasons for watching and I understand that — they’re separate from the “people” I’m talking about. I’m trying to comprehend if casual sports fans do the Nascar disco anymore because I think that dance is over. I think the sentence, “Yo, turn on the Daytona 500. I heard it’s getting good,” won’t be said tonight.

I think people are becoming numb to Nascar. If my theory about only watching for the big crash is right, then I can elaborate. “People” like violence, but not too much. Football has the most visual violence, hence why it reins over the US. But not too much — people are a James Harrison hit away from calling for new safety measures. However, Nascar drivers are one error away from death. No one likes watching death, unless it’s a movie. Sports are real. It could be the casual sports fan is becoming more human and less Gladiator.

Or maybe Nascar will grow because Americans gobble up watching things-moving-fast. That would explain a lot (Jersey Shore).

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