Where is Racing's "Al Davis" / "Oakland Raiders?"

[Manifestospeed]

ManifestOspeed No. 4.

Maybe it's just me, but the latest suspension of Kurt Busch got me thinking. . . .

In today's antiseptic, "corporate" world of big-time racing . . . which is playing mostly to half-empty stands and truly bored audiences . . . is there an un-tapped market for a truly "outlaw" team.

In the NFL, Al Davis made a mint courting the untamed "outlaw" image with his "Just win, Baby" Oakland/L.A. Raiders.

Surely there are some "outlaw" sponsors who would gamble in underwriting a four-wheeled version of the Raiders . . . ("Outlaw" in this sense isn't scripted, namby-pamby stuff like "Go Daddy", but real, bare-knuckles, in-your-face pirate-vibe style)

Imagine it . . . A team of "outlaw" drivers like the Busch Brothers and some half-crazed, street-fightin', rebel-rouser-fugitive-from-a-Southern-Rock-band rednecks . . . Hard-chargers with a "go or blow," "lead-every-lap," don't-give-a-rip-about-the-chase mentality. . . .

Plain-spoken crew chiefs that would bitch and complain on camera like Smokey Yunick probably would, instead of robotically spouting the evasive NASCAR party line all the time. . . .

Wild-eyed dudes that would make "Junior" look like a buttoned-down Rotary Club president. . . .

Crazy? Or crazy like a fox?

[Barry Donovan]

I like it..
but it was for a younger organization. I am lucky to be just old enough to see the last of cars that looked like cars. Something has died. lack of freedom of man and who he is.

can't even be a xenophobe...let alone defend a deer poaching whiskey running pot dealing tire burning locale in the sticks with your own ride in nascar.

[pdub]

It's going on already. Demolition Derby. And the guys spend their own money and they aren't on TV. The supreme redneck motorsport. Coolers in the "grandstands" are strongly encouraged, if not totally required for admission. It's quite a hoot. It's a gas-powered twist on the old joke about another sport, "I went to see a fist fight and a hockey game broke out."

If they DID air it on TV, the seat in front of the TV at home would surely be the safest seat in the stadium.

At least that's the way it was in the deep South, the last time I went to one as a "crew member." That was so many years ago...

Deaf Bob's close to a demo car that's winning. A lot. Maybe he can add some input...

[Manifestospeed]

But there actually needs to be some "racin'" for the "Raiders" analogy to fit. Al Davis' team didn't just go around rumbling like "Hell's Angels" at Altamont (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert) They actually played the game of professional football . . . .

[pdub]

But there actually needs to be some "racin'" for the "Raiders" analogy to fit. Al Davis' team didn't just go around rumbling like "Hell's Angels" at Altamont (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert) They actually played the game of professional football . . . .

Yeah, you can't say the Al Davis Raiders didn't play football, and winning football, but in the bigger picture, you also can't say that all the other teams and fans in the nation hated them like the plague. Not that it matters, if you're winning I guess. It was kinda like the guy who blows past everybody else in the emergency lane when everybody's stopped on the interstate because of a wreck. Disrespect to all other humans.

[Manifestospeed]

Yeah, but a lot of 'em used to boo Earnhardt, Sr. until he became sort of an elder statesman/down-home "corporate" alternative some time in the '90s. Every good drama needs some "pirates" and scoundrels for the milquetoast Pat Boone/Jimmy Johnson/chamber-of-commerce/"establishment" fans to root against.

I just suspect there's a pile 'o money possible in proper marketing of an outlaw motorsports outfit . . . .

[pdub]

I can't win this one. Not equipped.

[Brian Lohnes]

I think this is a cool idea and it appeals directly to our collective love of the old fashioned anti-hero. There's the "dirty dozen" and more recently, "the expendables" at the movies. There was the '86 Mets which broke the hearts of us in Boston, but were complete lunatics who "did everything wrong" with respect to the established decorum and customs of the game, there's been the "Big Bad Bruins" and the "Broad street Bullies" in hockey as well.

It is all in context though. Don't you think the Italians saw Ol' Shel and his boys with the Fords at LeMans as these types of guys? Knuckle dragging, bib overall wearing, 'Mericans who swore and drank and fought. About as "gentlemanly" as Attilla the Hun. In drag racing there were the legendary "Surfers" who rode their skateboards around the pits and looked incredulously at other teams as they serviced their cars, "You guys really know how to fix these things, huh?" They'd say and roll away, killing everyone in the ensuing rounds while not touching anything but a fuel jug between rounds

If I ever hit it big enough, I'd back door fund drag racing's version of "the expendables" in top fuel dragster form. Black car, black rig, not a word of lettering. Take a few of the guys in the sport who have made their bones on a shoestring and let them get after it with some backing and not a soul would know where it was coming from. The surlier the better.

I think this is a neat topic!

[BOOOGHAR]

NASCAR higher ups would frown upon "that image" and im sure wouldnt let anything like that happen

[SpiderGearsMan]

hendrick just beats everyone's as s

[pdub]

NASCAR as a sanctioning body is the most reactive government I've ever paid attention to in all of sports. E Sr. got killed, so NOW let's go for head restraints, etc. Never PRO-active, never looking ahead.

The whole while, they're falling behind. Empty stands, TV ratings going south.

I've quit watching. I'll watch Daytona, figuring there will be the "Big One." And this year like lots of other years I tuned into Bristol, but I'd forgotten that they cut that track up and totally destroyed the 36-degree banking that made guys throw their helmets at each other. Not the same race, not the same track at all. WTF were they thinking when they did that?

[Deaf Bob]

Pdub... We don't look bad...hard to do when the cars are pink!
We smile then hit them so hard, they wonder what happened..

[pdub]

Pdub... We don't look bad...hard to do when the cars are pink!
We smile then hit them so hard, they wonder what happened..

Post the pics Bob, I don't have them. I should, but I don't (guilty)

[Deaf Bob]

Post the pics Bob, I don't have them. I should, but I don't (guilty)

For some reason, I can't seem to... Must be a second class citizen on here...

[Manifestospeed]

I think this is a cool idea and it appeals directly to our collective love of the old fashioned anti-hero. There's the "dirty dozen" and more recently, "the expendables" at the movies. There was the '86 Mets which broke the hearts of us in Boston, but were complete lunatics who "did everything wrong" with respect to the established decorum and customs of the game, there's been the "Big Bad Bruins" and the "Broad street Bullies" in hockey as well.

It is all in context though. Don't you think the Italians saw Ol' Shel and his boys with the Fords at LeMans as these types of guys? Knuckle dragging, bib overall wearing, 'Mericans who swore and drank and fought. About as "gentlemanly" as Attilla the Hun. In drag racing there were the legendary "Surfers" who rode their skateboards around the pits and looked incredulously at other teams as they serviced their cars, "You guys really know how to fix these things, huh?" They'd say and roll away, killing everyone in the ensuing rounds while not touching anything but a fuel jug between rounds

If I ever hit it big enough, I'd back door fund drag racing's version of "the expendables" in top fuel dragster form. Black car, black rig, not a word of lettering. Take a few of the guys in the sport who have made their bones on a shoestring and let them get after it with some backing and not a soul would know where it was coming from. The surlier the better.

I think this is a neat topic!

Great comparisions. Loved the references to the Surfers and Shelby v. the European racing aristocracy.