Prior to the start of the 2010 racing season NASCAR’s senior executives made a rather eyebrow raising announcement that said they wanted to return to old school racing. They wanted to bring back the old “racing is rubbing” theory. They essentially said “have at it boys.” The result has been some outstanding moments in the 2010 NASCAR season filled with road rage antics on the track as well as some off the track media sound bites that were often laugh out loud funny.
Apparently the “have at it boys” policy does not apply to the media agencies covering NASCAR racing. That’s why Rusty Wallace found himself issuing a public apology last Monday afternoon to driver Kyle Busch.
At the conclusion of Friday night’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Chicago, Busch was busy stealing his latest series win on the final lap of the race. Wallace was in the ESPN2 broadcast booth providing the television viewers with color commentary. Meanwhile the fans were heavily booing race winner Kyle Busch. It’s actually not anything we haven’t seen or heard in the past. In fact, Busch seemed to think it was funny and cracked a joke about it during a victory lane television interview.
Meanwhile, back in the ESPN2 broadcast booth, Wallace was not amused by Busch and muttered what the network later described as a “one word expletive” aimed at the driver. By Wednesday we all learned that Wallace had questioned Busch’s intellectual capacity and had, in fact, called him a “dumb ass” over an open network microphone.
Walllace has always been well known and admired for being a very candid person. He’s never once hesitated to speak his mind on any topic. That’s why so many of us admire him a driver, a Sprint Cup champion, a Nationwide Series team owner and now a television racing analyst.
There’s a legion of Wallace fans who thought the remark was very funny. There’s another legion of Busch haters who thought the remark was both true and very appropriate. ESPN2 executives apparently left their sense of humor locked in their brief cases on this particular evening. There was a public statement, issued early in the week, that said there were no plans to suspend Wallace. The statement went on to say “ESPN has talked to Rusty Wallace and he understands his remark was uncalled for.”
ESPN executives also made Rusty Wallace understand that a prepared apology was also in order. It probably killed him to have to do it. The apology read as follows: “at the end of Friday night’s telecast, I made an unfortunate remark regarding Kyle Busch. There’s no excuse and I certainly know better, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to everyone, including Kyle, for my mistake.”
Lighten up people. All he said was “dumb ass”. It happens to even the best in the broadcast industry. Even yours truly, a retired veteran of live radio and some time in local television, has muttered things over a microphone that I didn’t realize was still on. Fortunately for me I was working for people at the time who were laughing so hard they didn’t have enough air left in their lungs to yell at me and what I said was a lot worse than “dumb ass.”
In fact, this very morning I heard considerably worse language issues from a televised re run of “Law And Order.” That remark has something to do with “nailing that son of a bitch.”
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