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By Root 2317 0

putting live qualifying trials on ESPN2, people were just hammering their local cable affiliates saying, “We’ve got to have ESPN2!” and that was because of us. The problem was, Mr. France had gotten ill, and the negotiations were now in the hands of people who did not share the same respect and loyalty to ESPN. These people who were negotiating for NASCAR had been given a small percentage that was going to be theirs, their cut for whatever they’d negotiate. So they cleverly planted rumors in newspapers and large national publications about the value of the sport. In my opinion, I think there was a lot of backroom politics. And I still believe that had Mr. France been actively involved, and had he not been ill, ESPN would not have lost.

I know ESPN was prepared to pay a lot of money to stay a part of this, and when it all came down, I was shocked, I was flabbergasted, I was disappointed. I felt betrayed, and I told people at the top level of NASCAR, “This shouldn’t happen this way. It absolutely shouldn’t happen. We’re a family. And suddenly we’re going to show up at the family reunion and we’re not invited?” The new partners, Fox and NBC, primarily Fox, didn’t even want ESPN to have a presence. They wouldn’t even let us in the racetrack.

But from a pure business standpoint, taking away the emotion, the money that NBC and Fox spent was a great deal for NASCAR. There was no doubt Fox and NBC were going to lose big-time. Which they did. They lost a lot of money.

When they got NASCAR, both Fox and NBC called right away, the day it was announced, and offered very good opportunities. But the way I was raised in North Carolina by my father and my grandfather was that when you shook somebody’s hand, that was the guy you bought it from. And I shook ESPN’s hand and said, “I’m going to be here for five years.” So what happened was it gave me a chance to move into the broadcast booth, where I did college football for ABC, and sometimes subbed for Brent Musburger. And I got a chance to play-by-play college basketball, which I love. It was always “When we get NASCAR back, you’re going to have a major role, because you’re the only person on our whole team that’s staying.” So that was basically the whole NASCAR department at ESPN: me.

RICH FEINBERG:

My hardest day at the company was the day we lost NASCAR. It was like your heart had been ripped out. You felt like you gave so much of yourself—not just professionally, but because it was such a passion. There was a huge connection between the growth of NASCAR and the growth of ESPN. We traveled a very parallel path, and I think that’s part of the reason why there was so much surprise that we were separating.

We lost it in ’99, so we had to do all of 2000 as a lame-duck team. Our last race was in Atlanta that year, and George Bodenheimer came down. He asked me that Sunday morning before the race, “Rich, could you gather everybody in the tent? We’ve been doing this for twenty-something years, and after today we’re not doing it anymore, for at least six years, so I’d like to thank them on behalf of the company.” That morning was a very, very rainy morning—cold and dreary, the weather a perfect complement to the sadness that many of us felt. And I’m an emotional person. George said, “I’d like you to introduce me because not everybody knows my name, especially the engineers.” So we’re all in the tent, and the breakfast ends, and somebody yells for quiet. Now I have to get up and introduce George. I had asked George if I could take a moment to thank everybody, and I remember that I broke down. I cried in front of the entire staff, I could barely say the words “George Bodenheimer” and thank him.

FRED GAUDELLI:

Right around the time ESPN lost NASCAR—this is like 1999—ESPN’s got Sunday Night Football, and inside the booth are Mike Patrick, Paul Maguire, and Joe Theismann. We’re doing a Bears–Lions game at Detroit. The Lions block a Bears field goal and we go to commercial. So I cue up the replay and I see this linebacker, Stephen Boyd, basically run into a defensive lineman, smash into his