We begin acknowledging the passing of Formula Two driver Anthoine Hubert after his accident in Saturday's Formula Two race from Spa-Francorchamps. Hubert was 22 years old and he won last year's GP3 Series championship. The French driver had two victories this season, in the sprint race at Monaco and the sprint race at Circuit Paul Ricard. American driver Juan Manuel Correa was also injured in the accident, sufferred fractures in both legs and a minor spinal injury. Correa is currently in stable condition and in intensive care in Liége and he will be transferred home to the United States once his conditions are more stable. I highly recommend BBC chief F1 writer Andrew Benson's sobering snapshot of the Spa-Francorchamps paddock in the aftermath of the accident and David Cameron's eulogy to Hubert. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
We Can't All Avoid Football
It is that time of the year again! September has come and with the end of summer fast approaching, the American public returns to its end of year weekly gatherings, football season is here!
Football is king. Close to a hundred million people are going to watch each week. Many are going to gamble. Many participate in fantasy football leagues. It has a hold on the attention of the American sports landscape and American public from now through the start of February. Based on time, football season is not that long. The regular season ends with the calendar year. It is really a four-month ride. Some teams know their season is over come November. The final month is a handful of games a weekend. It is not much but it takes over. No one is going to beat it.
With the arrival of football season, everyone knows what comes next in the American motorsports world: the decline. Ratings are going to drop. Attention is going to drop. Instead of ending on a high, the season ends with a lull.
There is nothing to stop it but increasingly series are trying to avoid it.
IndyCar made it know it wanted to end its season prior to the start of football season when Mark Miles took over as CEO of Hulman & Co. The last few seasons have ended in the early weeks of football season and this year will end on week three of the NFL season but one week against football is manageable.
NASCAR is another story. Darlington started 12 consecutive weeks of competition to end the season. NASCAR goes head-to-head with football into November, on the eve of Thanksgiving with the champions decided on week 11 of the NFL season. The 2019 season could be the last of such late season finales in NASCAR. The series is trying to end its season earlier and the 2020 season will conclude on November 8th, a week earlier with the 2021 season heralded as the great shakeup due to every track contract being up after 2020.
The length of NASCAR's season means it cannot completely avoid the NFL. It will always run into autumn. Even if the season was shortened to 30 or 32 races the season would still run into October. NASCAR is fine with that. The networks are fine with that. NBC needs something to fill NBCSN on Sundays, NASCAR has an audience, though not as big as it once was but big enough to put NBCSN at the head of the pack of the cable sports channels on a Sunday and NBC likes having NASCAR as a lead-in to Football Night in America and Sunday Night Football at times.
The problem is it is not just IndyCar and NASCAR that is trying to avoid football. On paper, it appears everyone is trying to avoid football.
Golf shook up its calendar in 2019. The PGA Championship moved to May from August. The Fedex Cup dropped a tournament, being made up of three events instead of four and it concluded on August 25th when the 2018 Fedex Cup did not begin until August 23rd.
The NBA is talking about schedule changes for the 2021-22 season. The NHL has 56 games scheduled on Sunday from October to December in 2019. From January to March, the NHL has 83 Sunday games scheduled. When January 1st falls on a Sunday, the NHL holds its Winter Classic on Monday January 2nd. Major League Soccer made a shift in its schedule this year, with MLS Cup taking place on November 10th a full month earlier than last year. Not all of those changes for MLS' schedule shift were done necessarily due to football but it surely factored into the decision. College basketball struggles to get noticed until football season ends and once football season ends we are a month away from March Madness, conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament.
If every sport tries to squeeze their seasons between February and Labor Day weekend, everyone is going to lose out. We will end up with a congested sports calendar and no one is going to stand out. The hope of getting attention is gone. The audience splinters more. You avoid football but still end up getting suffocated.
Even if you avoid football, football is talking about expanding. Every year an 18-game NFL season is brought up and while there are plenty of reasons why that should not occur, the over-arching reason as to why it will happen is money. Football is king. Two more weeks means more money and more money for everyone. It is more ticket revenue. It is higher salaries. It is more advertising dollars for television networks. It is larger television deals. It is more money going toward gambling. The rich win out. The rich are going to do what makes them richer.
If football expands, then what? What are IndyCar, NASCAR, golf, hockey, college basketball and so on going to do? Can these sports entities really afford to squeeze themselves into a tighter box?
A few years ago, when the NFL had a player lockout, NASCAR moved the Daytona 500 back a week preemptively in case the season was delayed and the Super Bowl was pushed back. There is a real chance that an expanding NFL season means the Super Bowl will permanently fall on what has customarily been Daytona 500 weekend. The NFL isn't going to stop out of courtesy to the Daytona 500. The NFL has an audience of over 110 million people in its favor and it can put the Super Bowl wherever it wants.
It is important for every series to maximize its potential. If IndyCar wants to end its season before football season began then it must start its season immediately after football season ends. It cannot waste a week and must maximize that window. There are even holes late in football season. Once you get to the weekend of the conference championship games that Saturday is open and there are two games on Sunday, the first of which starts at 3:30 p.m. ET. You could even run the Saturday before the Super Bowl.
However, an expanding football season also forces series to come to terms with their standings and act in their own interests. If football expands, these series have to still go out and do business. It is one thing to avoid going head-to-head with the Super Bowl, the opening weekend of the season, Thanksgiving and playoff games but there are times when you can run on a Sunday. There will be Sundays where there are only three games going on at 4:00 p.m. ET. There is competition but not much, not ten games like at 1:00 p.m. ET.
These series have to be smart and see that it could find success at events during football season. The weather is beautiful in late-September and early-October. People want to be outside as much as they can before it gets cold. If a track can draw its best crowd at the start of autumn then a series should consider that date over a summer weekend where over half that crowd stays home because of the heat.
IndyCar and NASCAR have to pick and choose their battles but it cannot completely shut down once football season gets started. Both series know that if it puts itself in a fight against the NFL it is not going to win but there are alternatives to fighting. A hell of a lot of people are going to watch football on a Sunday in September or October. It is reflex to them but there is an audience out there that will tune into a race whether it be because they are not into football or because their team has a bye week, played on Thursday night or plays on Sunday or Monday night or you will have people that choose to tune into something else because their team is getting blown out and they cannot bare it or their team is the team comfortably ahead with the backups in and a victory is a certainty.
There is no argument that avoiding football is a smart thing to do but a day may come soon where that will be unavoidable or where the congestion of sports leagues means it makes more sense to look for less crowded pastures.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Will Power but did you know...
Charles Leclerc won the Belgian Grand Prix, his first career grand prix victory.
Pedro Piquet and Marcus Armstrong split the Formula Three races from Spa-Francorchamps.
The #7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López won the FIA World Endurance Championship's 4 Hours of Silverstone. The #42 Cool Racing Oreca-Gibson of Nicolas Lapierre and Antonin Borga won in LMP2. The #91 Porsche of Gianmaria Bruni and Richard Lietz won in GTE-Pro. The #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Emmanuel Collard, Niklas Nielsen and François Perrodo won in GTE-Am.
The #28 IDEC Sport Oreca-Nissan of Memo Rojas, Paul-Loup Chatin and Patrice Lafargue won ELMS' 4 Hours of Silverstone. The #11 Eurointernational Ligier-Nissan of Mikkel Jensen and Jens Petersen won in the LMP3 class, its second victory of the season. The #88 Proton Competition Porsche of Thomas Preining, Gianluca Girauldi and Ricardo Sanchez won in GTE.
Erik Jones won the Southern 500. Cole Custer won the Grand National Series race after Denny Hamlin was disqualified.
Rinus VeeKay and Toby Sowery split the Indy Lights race from Portland. Kyle Kirkwood swept the Indy Pro 2000 races. Hunter McElrea swept the U.S. F2000 races.
The #61 R.Ferri Motorsport Ferrari of Daniel Serra and Toni Vilander swept the Blancpain World Challenge America races from Watkins Glen.
The #19 Stephen Cameron Racing BMW of Greg Liefooghe and Seain Quinlan and the #34 Murillo Racing Mercedes-AMG of Matt Fassnacht and Christia Szymczak split the GT4 America SprintX races from Watkins Glen. The #50 Panoz of Ian James and the #18 Andretti Autosport McLaren of Jarett Andretti split the GT4 America sprint races.
The #563 Orange1 FFF Racing Team Lamborghini of Andrea Caldarelli and Marco Mapelli and the #76 R-Motorsport Aston Martin of Ricky Collard and Marvin Kirchhöfer split the Blancpain World Challenge Europe races from Nürburgring.
Coming Up This Weekend
The Italian Grand Prix.
The Brickyard 400.
Super GT is at Autopolis.
World Superbike returns after two months off at Algarve.
The Blancpain World Challenge Europe season concludes at the Hungaroring.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
