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Nascar and Racing

Kyle Busch: Good or Bad for NASCAR?

Posted Jun 10, 2009 10:24AM By Geoffrey Miller (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Kyle Busch, Nationwide Series, Joe Gibbs Racing

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Saturday night at Nashville Superspeedway, Kyle Busch handled the coveted guitar trophy in a manner that about 99.931 percent of the world would never think to do.

Yet, when we're thinking about the most dominant driver in the sport in terms of race wins over the past year and a half, a little more thought could have almost anticipated seeing Busch doing exactly what he did in smashing that custom-painted Gibson Les Paul into the victory lane concrete.

Whether or not you found the "celebration" to be a complete slap in the face to numerous people or just another much-heralded "Kyle being Kyle" moment, there remains a stirring question: Is this 24-year-old polarizer making NASCAR into a sport that is better or worse?

If you're a believer in the school of thought that any publicity is good publicity, Busch might be the best thing since ESPN's meteoric and sudden increase in NASCAR coverage that suspciciously conincided with their resumption of race broadcasting.

Face it -- the now-famous (or infamous) guitar smash has been played hundreds if not thousands of times on various sports channels and thoroughout the sports blogosphere since it landed body-first on that painted Nashville concrete. One Youtube video of the incident has over 14,000 views of it.

The impact of Busch's smash -- I'm not talking about how he failed to actually break the guitar in a rock-star fashion -- is probably more important, though, than the overall coverage.

NASCAR isn't a sport that people have never heard of at this point, and its not some web phenomenon.

Because of that, the publicity the sport is receiving can't exactly be the best in the eyes of the same crowd who won't support basketball's Indiana Pacers after their melee in Detroit or baseball players that have been accused of medically enhancing their on-field performance.

Watching Busch smash a beautiful trophy to pieces just looked disrespectful and, in my case, left me with a sick feeling in the stomach. Does that bring in viewers to NASCAR's next race?

I'm not entirely sure.

Then, there's the argument that NASCAR needs Kyle Busch just as it needs good tires at the Brickyard or a close finish at the Daytona 500 because he's a character without robot-like tendencies that many drivers -- including the reigning three-time champion Jimmie Johnson -- have been accused of in this era of sponsor-driven racing.

Several writers in the NASCAR media contingent this week have argued that Busch's guitar smash was a "so what?" moment, and that it's just another way that Busch is evolving into that villain of the sport people have clamored for since it lost Dale Earnhardt and Tony Stewart became a car owner. They've questioned why people aren't applauding Busch for his out-of-the-box actions and praised him for being different.

Aren't villians, though, supposed to be hated, booed and generally frowned on against by a good majority of a sport's fans? And isn't the true test of a guy that has the gall to take that role how well he can overcome mass hatred from the stands and still produce?

Kyle Busch has succeeded in that area, but where he hasn't succeeded is finding someone who is willing to take the staunch opposite role that will gladly throw numerous verbal barbs at the No. 18 or be a shoe-in for on-track fireworks whenever they run together.

Instead, Busch seems to the be the black-caped villian of a city that doesn't care what he does because they have no motivation to stop him.

In fact, that motivation has been sorely lacking from the Sprint Cup Series where Busch, at the moment, is 9th in points and just 53 markers from losing his lock-in spot to the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Sure, it's a little different in the Craftsman Truck Series and Nationwide Series where Busch has already tallied six total wins in 2009. That'll happen -- especially in the Nationwide Series where he should legitmately have two more wins and a bigger points lead -- when you're driving a Nationwide team with the resources of a Sprint Cup team.

I'll grant the fact that Kyle Busch is an acorn in a sport filled mostly with apples, and that his dominance certainly has energized and grown his fan base.

But when it comes to thinking that he's making the sport a better place, he seems to be following the pattern of one step forward and two steps back. He's claimed to have a deep respect for past NASCAR stars and made a huge donation to former Nationwide Series driver Sam Ard's health costs. He's given money to charities and donated a lot of time in that direction.

He's got no problem with talking at length about a race win, but when it comes to a narrow defeat, he's had a tough time figuring out how to let his fans know what happened but routinely avoiding that same media.

Smashing a coveted guitar in front of the whole world -- and more importantly Nashville track staff, artist Sam Bass and race sponsor (who walked out of victory lane according to Bass) Federated Auto Parts -- appears as a deep, deep disrespect for nearly everything in NASCAR.

A deep disrespect regardless of an intention to reward a team for their hard work with a piece of the guitar.

It's one thing to play the on- or off-track villian by spinning other cars or calling out other drivers, but when people who are in victory lane to congratulate a win and they leave with a nasty taste of disrespect because of a sheepish act, it's simple: Kyle Busch didn't do the right thing.

He's good for the sport on many, many levels right now, but there's still too much in Kyle Busch that isn't good for NASCAR right now.

Tags: Joe+Gibbs+Racing, Kyle+Busch, Nashville+Superspeedway, Nationwide+Series, Sprint+Cup

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