Typical Attitude or Abberation?

June 21st, 2008 by Glen Harness | Posted in Uncategorized |

The Tennessean today published a letter to the editor that you should read. The letter, titled “Car racing wastes natural resources” was written by a fellow named Todd Liebergen of Madison, Tennessee.

It’s pretty obvious that Todd isn’t a race fan.

But his argument strikes me as coming from the same mentality as those who would demolish the track at the Fairgrounds. It smacks of elitism and snobbishness in much the same way as arguments by opponents of the Motorplex. Folks who’ve, in the great majority of cases, moved into the neighborhood around the track and then have the gall to complain about the noise. It’s as if they’re talking down to the race fan.

My main concern here is that Mr. Liebergen’s view of racing is widespread in the Nashville area. Nashville Superspeedway can’t fill 25,000 seats for a Nationwide Series race, but drive a few hours north to Kentucky Speedway and their 70,000 seat grandstands are over flowing for their Nationwide race.

Maybe Nashville race fans have gotten too complacent. If that’s the case, then we (the Davidson County taxpayers) might as well sell the Fairgrounds for it’s $6,000,000 appraised value and use the money more productively.

When I put up the petition last December, I was pleasantly surprised at the response. Two national radio shows interviewed me about it. But once I compiled the data, I discovered that the support for keeping the track was coming more from folks outside Nashville than from within. Can it be that in the city that has the Ryman Auditorium, the Parthanon, and the Hermitage, out-of-towners have more appreciation for history than we do? I hope not.

If we don’t do something soon, racing in Nashville will be a thing of the past. If you’re a race fan, take off the morning of the first Tuesday of the month and go sit in on the Fair Board meeting. The “neighbors” (I put that in quotes because from what I can tell, they’ve brought in outside “neighborhood activists” to attend the Fair Board meetings) are certainly there at every meeting.

I believe the next meeting is Tuesday, July 1 at 8:00 am. They usually publish the meeting agenda here, but as of tonight, it’s still got last month’s agenda. Make your presence known by the Fair Board.