[illiNOISE]

We're talking about growing the sport, but I also see a growing trend, particularly on social media, of a vocal minority of race fans trashing traditional "ball" sports.

It usually comes when we have an event that's over the top in terms of popularity, like the Super Bowl, or perhaps the Final Four. Here comes all the Julie Andrew's "This is me not caring" social media memes. And others like it.

Look, if you engage in this unsolicited,
passive aggressive baiting, maybe you have what you feel are legit reasons for hating mainstream sports. Perhaps you were bullied or harassed by your high school's running back 30 years ago. Perhaps it's the NFL anthem protest. Or perhaps something else.

But at the end of the day, when you attack mainstream sports on social media, you essentially attack the way of life for MILLIONS of sports crazed people. And, more ominously for our spirt, you potentially turn folks who were previously merely ambivalent about car culture and racing into actual hostile enemies of it.

And things get even worse when someone like Clint Boyer goes on the record saying "T ball is stupid.", like he did recently on a Dale Earnhardt Jr podcast. I wonder how many youth sports coaches, some of whom don't get car culture and racing, shared that on each other's social media walls? You think the whole sport doesn't just look like a bunch of Neanderthal Philistines in that light?

In short, boys and girls, like the new Kenny Chesney song says, can't we all just get along?