Couch Potato Tuesday: ESPN Cuts Away A Little Too Early

At Martinsville Speedway, trouble has few places to hide.

However, there’s also a Chase to deal with. With the Chase in effect, focus can narrow to a significant degree. More on that momentarily.

Before we get going, ESPN announced early on Monday morning that the network has come to terms with Ricky Craven for the former Cup Series regular to stay on with the network as its primary NASCAR analyst. What will that look like? If you watched SportsCenter after the race on Sunday, Craven’s role will likely look similar to what you saw Craven doing with Jonathan Coachman. Given how much the hosts can rotate on weekend editions of SportsCenter, Craven could be working with any number of anchors. However, he’ll likely grow comfortable with a group of three or four different people, one of whom could be Nicole Briscoe (of course, that’s depending on what her schedule will be once she transitions to SportsCenter full-time).

The deal will result in Craven being to NASCAR on SportsCenter what Barry Melrose has been to the NHL since the pre-eminent hockey league took its games to what is now the NBC Sports Network. While Craven won’t be as common a sight as Melrose, who appears nearly every night on the show, he’ll be a welcome sight for NASCAR fans. With Craven in-studio and Marty Smith still on the payroll (remember, Smith will serve as a Charlotte-based bureau reporter, but will still write extensively about NASCAR), ESPN is far better suited to cover NASCAR without rights to air races in 2015 than it was in 2001.

Will ESPN have any physical presence at the races next year? Unless NASCAR decrees against it, probably. It still has Smith and Ryan McGee; those two, in addition to Craven, will serve as ESPN’s NASCAR department for the foreseeable future. That move effectively killed ESPN’s motorsports coverage back in 2001, and it was done in the name of helping the new NASCAR programming (specifically FOX Sports Net’s Totally NASCAR) get off the ground. I don’t think NASCAR is callous enough to go down that road again.

Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500

One of the best races at Martinsville in awhile hit the track last Sunday as Dale Earnhardt, Jr. earned his first career victory at Martinsville (giving me five big points in the Frontstretch pick competition in the process). However, just because the finish was quite joyous does not necessarily mean that the presentation was as well.

Ever since the Chase started last month, I’ve constantly talked about how ESPN doesn’t so much preview the race itself during NASCAR Countdown but cover how the event could affect the Chasers. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not really a race preview. That’s Chase-hyping and going over scenarios.

Despite the fact that Sunday’s Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 was held in near perfect weather, I believe that NASCAR has pushed the fall race at Martinsville too far back in the schedule. Granted, NASCAR won’t have the Sunday NFL Countdown issue next season that it currently has with ESPN, but the insistence of starting races after 1:30 p.m. ET at a venue without lights is going to be a bit of an issue going forward. Early October is probably the perfect time for Martinsville’s fall race. The weather should be good, but not blazing hot like in 1998. Getting the race in before dark is not an issue. Under the current circumstances, anything more than a brief shower can cut the race short due to darkness.

Sunday’s race coverage shows how knowledgeable ESPN’s on-air crew is. In regards to the Brian Vickers–Kasey Kahne conflict, Allen Bestwick simply informed viewers after the first incident to keep tabs on the two of them for the rest of the day after viewing the replay of the incident. Mind you, we’re talking about a fairly innocent get-together. Sixty laps later, Vickers dumped Kahne. Fifty laps after the second incident, Kahne dumped Vickers, prompting NASCAR to tell both teams to cut out the stupidity. It probably wasn’t quite on the level of the speech given to Cole Trickle and Rowdy Burns in Days of Thunder by then-future U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (as Big John, the film’s equivalent of Bill France, Jr.), but it got the job done.

I just wish that we got to see what sparked the whole mess in the first place. After being eliminated from the race, Kahne stated that Vickers ran him out of room exiting turn 2 half a lap before the incident. A few seconds later, after chopping Kahne off entering turn 3, Kahne tried to go to the inside of Vickers and Vickers tried to block and spun himself out.

Despite the knowledge of ESPN’s on-air group, they can get distracted. The problems that Brad Keselowski had with his gears occurred while ESPN was onboard with him. I knew immediately that he’d broken, yet it took quite a bit of time for ESPN to notice. However, I don’t think the booth noticed the telltale racing of the engine revolutions at the time. By the time it did, Keselowski was trolling down the frontstretch, 25 mph slower than everyone else and about to be clobbered from behind by Casey Mears. ESPN should have stuck to Keselowski’s view in that instance. The Dual Path technology that ESPN’s been touting for the last couple of years would really have come in handy there.

Despite the fact that the Chase points had been reset, ESPN spent a good chunk of the race showing points as they run. I found that tactic pointless; everyone started with the same number of points. The championship order would more or less be wherever the drivers were in the race.

Post-race coverage was very much focused on the Hendrick Motorsports and Earnhardt story. While it’s undoubtedly true that it was a big story (just the crowd’s approval says a lot here), but there are a couple of other issues that probably should have been covered as well, one being the Vickers-Kahne conflict. Granted, Kahne was already out of the race prior to the finish and was likely already out of the track via the pedestrian tunnel and at his bus by the checkers, but Vickers finished the event four laps down in 27th and could have been reached afterward, in theory.

Going down the Chase road, viewers did not hear from Kevin Harvick or Keselowski after the race despite both drivers having days that could ruin their championship challenges. Keselowski did show up on the Internet-exclusive Rundown, but I’d figure that given how important the Chase was to ESPN’s narrative, the network would try to fit it in on the regular broadcast. While on that topic, perhaps an interview with Matt Kenseth (finished sixth) would have been proper here as well since it was Kenseth’s wheel hop that resulted in Harvick crashing.

Kroger 200

Saturday saw the Camping World Truck Series teams take to one of only two original tracks remaining on the series’ schedule for a 200-lap duel. The action was swell, and the race ended up with a popular winner in Darrell Wallace, Jr.  Despite that fact, there was more to the race than Wallace winning while honoring Wendell Scott.

In between interviews and segments featuring Jeb Burton as a prospective trucker, the most interesting part of pre-race coverage was a piece on rookie racer Gray Gaulding. Gaulding is 16 years old, yet the piece depicts Gaulding as a 100 percent adult, working out at the NTS Motorsports shop.

Gaulding’s father, Dwayne, appears to want Gray to attempt to qualify for the Daytona 500 in 2016, when he will be 18. The sheer thought of that is insane. In order for that to happen, Gray would have to compete in the 2016 ARCA season opener at Daytona, then get approved by NASCAR to race Sprint Cup at Daytona despite never racing at any track longer than 1.25 miles because he won’t be old enough. Dwayne, this isn’t 1980. It’s not happening.

While it’s interesting to note that Gaulding would spin out his own grandmother to win a race, and that he would say that while standing right next to his actual grandmother, sometimes, you need to take a step back and think. We’ve been hearing about Gaulding since he was 12. Obviously, he likes what he’s doing, but I wonder whether he had much of a childhood beyond age 12. His existence is nothing like K&N Pro Series East champion Ben Rhodes, who actually goes to a regular (albeit parochial) school, or Chase Elliott, who drove full-time in the Nationwide Series earlier this year while finishing his senior year in public school. I’m no parent, but I’m a little concerned that Dwayne may be trying to live through his son. It’s definitely a topic worth looking into with all the young guns coming into NASCAR’s national series over the past few years.

During the race, there were a couple of aspects of the coverage that caught my eye. The telecast left me a little confused as to who actually caused the second caution of the race. Officially, fluid in turns 3 and 4 brought out the caution. That was fairly obvious as there was a strip of fluid on the track, and a replay showed the leaders nearly wiping out on it like it was Watkins Glen in 2012.

Later, the fifth caution came out due to Cole Custer running through Gaulding in an attempt to take out Joey Coulter. There was also a quick shot of Justin Jennings’ wrecked No. 63 Chevrolet putting around exiting turn 2. I have no clue what happened to Jennings. Confusion is never a good thing on a race telecast. Viewers watch the Kroger 200 in order to be informed as to what’s going on if they can’t be in Ridgeway. All I know is that Jennings was pretty much done after the crash.

The telecast gave Austin Hill (and to a lesser extent, Matt Tifft) some dap for having pretty good debut races. However, there was no coverage given to what happened to Hill late in the race to drop the No. 92 to a 26th-place finish, five laps down. Viewers could only see Hill driving down pit road at the 30 mph speed limit in the background when he stopped with no reference to what was going on from the booth.

That'll ruin your day. #NCWTS #Kroger200 pic.twitter.com/RIbpCSCuzH

— Ricky Benton Racing (@RickyBentonRcng) October 25, 2014

After the race, I saw this picture posted to the team’s Twitter page. Being the inquisitive chap that I am, I asked what happened, thinking that it was a case of loose lugnuts after Hill made his final stop under the eighth caution. A reply from whoever was running the team’s Twitter feed at the time indicated that they thought it was an outright broken wheel. Whatever the cause, it completely ruined a great day.

Overall, viewers did get some decent coverage. There was hard racing for position and we got to see that hard racing. The coverage of the John Wes Townley–Brandon Jones crash was pretty good. That was a situation where the first time you see the crash, it looks really blatant, but it wasn’t. Townley effectively wrecked himself, but it was a racing incident. I cannot see Townley being able to avoid Jones after turning himself into the inside wall.

That’s all for this week. We’ve got Texas coming up this weekend, which marks the stretch run for all three of NASCAR’s national series. In addition, Formula 1 returns to Texas with a depleted field (no Marussia or Caterham). Here’s your listings.

Tuesday, October 28

Wednesday, October 29

Thursday, October 30

Friday, October 31

Saturday, November 1

Sunday, November 2

Monday, November 3

* – Tape Delayed
/ – Highlighted Coverage
# – Repeat Coverage
$ – Available via password-protected online streaming. Check with your internet service/programming provider for availability.

Note that once again, college football could come into play in regards to the Nationwide race. ESPN will be airing Wisconsin-Rutgers starting at noon on Saturday. The classic rivalry between Big Ten conference foes  is scheduled to end at 3 p.m. with College Football Scoreboard as buffer programming between the game and the race. Of course, as you’re all aware of, just because a game is scheduled for three hours doesn’t mean it won’t go well over it. I will give updates on the game on my Twitter feed to keep you abreast of what’s going on. ESPNEWS could be used for overflow coverage starting at 3:30 p.m., but that would be dependent on the East Carolina-Temple game being over by then. Also, Houston-South Florida is scheduled to start at 4 p.m.

I will provide critiques of the Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck series races from Texas Motor Speedway for next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch.  The Critic’s Annex will take a break this week before returning next week with a look at FOX Sports’ broadcast of the Sunoco World Series 150 for the Whelen Modified Tour, which premieres Saturday on FOX Sports 1.

If you have a gripe with me, or just want to say something about my critique, feel free to post in the comments below, or contact me through the email address provided on the website in my bio. Also, if you want to “like” me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, please click on the appropriate icons below. Finally, if you would like to contact any of the TV partners personally with an issue regarding their TV coverage from last weekend, please click on the following links:

FOX Sports
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At this point, there is still no public contact e-mail for NBC Sports. When they finally get around to creating a new link, I will post it for you.

As always, if you choose to contact the network by email, do so in a courteous manner. Network representatives are far more likely to respond to emails that ask questions politely rather than emails full of rants and vitriol.

Phil Allaway

Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.

Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.