Mike & Mike Miss the Boat on Danica Patrick

June 2, 2011 5 Comments »

It was late U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said that you’re entitled to your own opinion, just not to your own facts.

Of course, I don’t know if the good senator ever had to get up at 3:30 a.m., then get asked to talk for four hours straight without without saying anything stupid. I think the only living soul in my household who could pull that off is my beagle/lab, Jack — he doesn’t talk much.

So I’m trying not to slam ESPN “Mike & Mike in the Morning” hosts Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic too harshly for their segment Tuesday morning that included Danica Patrick. Greenberg was asking Golic which athletes he felt turned the needle when it came to television ratings. When Greenberg got to Patrick, Golic said no.

The entire premise of what they were doing was shaky, at best. Sports talk is about opinion, but in this case there is very little subjectivity. You can go back and look at numbers that will definitively tell you how many people were viewing when a certain someone was present/absent. Nobody on this planet will try to tell you that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson don’t make more people watch golf, and if they do, well, smack them.

According to SPEEDTV.com, Patrick’s 2010 ARCA race at Daytona drew 2.4 million viewers, an 87 percent increase over the 1.3 million viewers the 2009 event had. Her subsequent Nationwide debut at Daytona was the most-viewed series race in the history of cable TV.

The only way to blow off the numbers would be to conclude that Patrick was a flash in the pan. But her consistent improvement in the Nationwide Series and the constant buzz over her potential full-time move to NASCAR renders that argument useless for everyone except guys like Golic and Greenberg, who wouldn’t know because they just don’t follow racing.

Their annual trip to Texas Motor Speedway is a teeth-clincher, as they struggle to ask somewhat intelligible questions. In the past NASCAR, which hoped for mainstream attention, would’ve welcomed all the talk.

But NASCAR isn’t the NHL anymore and doesn’t need big media names butchering the goings-on.

When it comes to NASCAR, the Mikes should take the advice comedian Ron White offered a relative who started caterwauling about a subject he knew nothing about.

“The next time you have a thought … let it go.”

  • Russ Edwards

    Get over it. While anybody who reads these blogs is somewhat interested. in racing not everone in.
    Compared to a Tiger Woods or LeBron James, Danica is a nobody. And the more exposure ,excuse the pun, she gets the more. That is true.
    So relax about it.

  • Chris Fiegler

    Do you think that Danica Patrick will be in the Sprint Cup Series in 2012 or run some Sprint Cup Series Races in 2012?

  • Andy D

    There’s a difference between recognition and TV ratings. Auto racing is reputed to be the sport with the highest attendance in the US. I believe that Danica Patrick’s name is recognized by a large swath of people, racing fans or not.

    I know who Tiger Woods is but I don’t need a nap badly enough to get me to watch him play golf. I don’t know what sport LeBron James plays but I’ve heard the name. Obviously it hasn’t inspired me to watch him at work.

    Unlike most major sports, there are many varieties of auto racing. College football and the NFL are more similar than Off-Road and Indy. Some like NASCAR, others like drag racing. I think folks mostly watch what they like and personalities don’t transfer across series very much.

    Danica has gotten a lot of press. Much like when Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan switched sports, people were curious as to how they would do in a new environment. They brought ratings boosts that soon died down. The same can be said of Danica in Nationwide. I doubt that any of these three brought new eyes to the sports they were regularly playing.

    Danica’s following is rapidly dimishing in Indycar because of her lack of wins. Other talented women have shown up to draw away her fans. Some will follow her to stock cars but she’s not likely to win championships right off the bat and interest will diminish. Some who liked Indycars will hate stock cars. More will drop off. The haters will grow tired of watching to get ammunition for their rants. More will go away.

    I think Danica was a big ratings boost in her first few years in Indycars. She never was as good as Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan and therefore is no longer a ratings draw. She is a good Indy racer and could have a moderately successful career on oval tracks. I don’t think she will last more than the length of her initial contract in stock cars. By then she will have attained enough millions to retire and work with Lyn St. James, coaching women racers.

  • billydelyon

    I’m still trying to figure out what the heck Russ is talking about in his post…

    Danica is huge for NASCAR, every race she’s run in has had huge increases in viewership, huge…

    I hope she does come up to cup, she can wheel a car no doubt about it, I look forward to her having a good finish in Chicago today!

  • billydelyon

    As far as Mike & Mike not being to bright about the goings on in Motor sports, not a surprise, kinda like when the boys of Pardon the Interruption also have no clue what their talking about when it comes to NASCAR, they give you the feeling that NASCAR is a bit of a joke to them, and not really relevant…
    Knuckle heads…