Bristol Was Never the Great Colosseum

The NASCAR Cup season will hit the quarter mark this Sunday (April 13) when the series visits Bristol Motor Speedway. Let’s touch upon stale marketing before we get into another topic in the sport.

As the drivers circulated the track last weekend, FOX lead announcer Mike Joy advertised the series as heading to “The Last Great Colosseum.” I had to check how this slogan is written because I wondered about the trademarking and how this idea gets sold.

It turns out that the spelling matters. So let’s unpack this moniker because A LOT is going on here.

First, let’s get to the “Colosseum” bit.

The Colosseum is a name proper for the amphitheater located in Rome, Italy. There is only one Colosseum. Every other facility that borrows from the namesake is a coliseum, defined as a large theater, arena, or stadium. So, already, there is silliness where there shouldn’t be.   

Aside from the fact that the use of the moniker is errant, the notion that Bristol is the last great anything is surely up for debate. This conscription of the idea is one borne out its more recent history than it is devoted to its historical past. That’s not to say that the track doesn’t have history, because it does.

Larry Carrier led the way in developing the Bristol track. After working with the idea of building a track in 1960 in Piney Flats, Tenn., he had the idea rejected and moved the site five miles south. His team broke ground in January 1961 and, by July of that year, opened for business as a 20,000-seat, half-mile track.

In 1964, the track leaders moved to expand to 27,000 seats while adding a drag strip. But it’s the renovations of 1969 that debuted the progressive high-banking environment that the track is known for. But that doesn’t make the venue a coliseum … or the Colosseum.

In fact, by the end of the 1980s, the track had built itself to only a 50,000-seat capacity.  Bruton Smith took over the track in 1996, when it had grown to nearly 80,000 seats. But Smith, who believed that nothing was ever over-the-top, expanded the size to 120,000, fully reaching his oversized vision by 2000 and hitting 147,000 seats.

In this scenario, Bristol doesn’t become the coliseum of yore until perhaps the early 1990s, which is hardly the archival representation that the track and the media mouthpiece enjoy selling. And as soon as one might have been able to argue that the racing product at Bristol could be labeled great, and in a coliseum, it all fell apart.

Take this for me, Werner Herzog.

The year was 2007, and people in Charlotte, excited by the development of a new car, looked to excite fans anew in the midst of the sport’s high-water mark. Smith also found reason to be optimistic for his Bristol track, as he had just overseen the repaving of the beloved track with the hope of continuing to provide enticing racing entertainment. The excitement and optimism proved to be short-lived.

The birth of the Car of Tomorrow in 2007, coupled with the track’s repave, resulted in disappointment, with Kyle Busch lamenting after he won at the track, “These cars suck.”

The car was part of the problem and the track avoided scrutiny for a moment, but then it, too, received a lion’s share of criticism. Since then, the track has played with all kinds of methods to improve the racing, even going so far as to ignore the track pavement altogether and switching to dirt for the spring race from 2021-2023.

Nothing advertises confidence in your track like being afraid to race on its actual surface.

Over the past decade, the track has reckoned with its outsized existence amid a changing cultural landscape that has shown less interest in NASCAR coupled with a desire to see something more compelling on the track. Figuring out how to navigate that duality showcases the limited recognition the marketing of the track has embraced.

The one element of the slogan that is, perhaps, appropriate is last.

Having debunked that Bristol is not the Colosseum and that it has not been great, calling it the last of something may be the unintentionally melancholic genius aspect of the whole deal. In an era when tracks continue to downsize, Bristol stands alone, stuck on its hubris and failing to find a new way forward.

What makes this notion stand out is how Darlington Raceway and its “too tough to tame” rhetoric circulates in much the same way.

Too tough to tame, eh? Please.

Out of 38 cars, last week’s race had just three DNFs, with 30 cars finishing on the lead lap. Tamed indeed. And if the big takeaway from the race is whether or not the track should keep encouraging its throwback paint schemes contest (quick note: it shouldn’t), then someone in the sport is not keeping their eye on the proverbial ball.

Rather than trying to sell the hype and then provide a suboptimal product, it is time to ditch the cheesy t-shirt slogans and figure out a way to make the racing the story rather than trying to live in the halcyon days of never-was and oversold lore.

Or whatever. Because the track with the sensationally-hyped “Big One” is coming up soon.

Woohoo.