Originally Posted by E.P.:
It took the entire tenure of the previous series coordinator to do absoultely nothing about these problems and run the program into the ground.
I need to correct that comment. It didn't take his entire tenure, in reality it only took about three years.
As for Paul's question.....
I like hundreds of others was excited when Kevin Miller's predecessor was hired. However over the course of two or three years it was evident the organization was not moving forward. In fact questions were starting to come at a frequent basis about the direction of the organization. Concerns existed on several fronts…...the Focus program was showing signs of becoming stagnant, the Silver Crown car debacle, OS and countless other items such as mis handling assignment of announcers, a former marketing employee handling a TV package in a manner that alienated an icon in the business, same marketing wiz lining up a tire deal with another mfg. only to be told USAC was going to stay with Hoosier (Admittedly I am not aware of what the other tire deal had so staying with Hoosier may have been the right thing. But I do know he was hot about the deal gone south.) I could mention other known issues that were brought to USAC’s attention but it would be inappropriate to mention them in this forum. I mention all of this to highlight the trend of management that looked or ran the other way as opposed to tackling the problems head on.
In my second year several concerns became clear that if not dealt with it could or would ruin the Focus program. The combo car thing comes to mind. I suggested 4 ways to combat the onset of pavement only cars. One idea was allow one frame sticker per car owner. If that owner was running for points which at the time had about a 50/50 split between pavement and dirt he really only had one choice in terms of chassis, that would be a traditional combo car.
Mike Devin told me it (one frame sticker) wouldn't work. I told him he couldn't afford not trying it to find out. I also told him if he tried it and it didn't work the people who were complaining about the rule not working would be the very same people who would have been complaining had he not tried to implement the rule. Sort of a damned if you do and damned if you don't deal, which is the nature of the beast when you’re involved on the administration side.
Anyway nothing about nothing was done (until the press release last Friday), you now average enough cars to have a good heat race per event, a dirt schedule doesn't exist, Keith Iaia is at it again with another choice for cost effective midget racing (I say that tongue in cheek as no racing is cost effective) and so it goes Mr. Kevin Miller and staff have their work cut out for them, on the surface it appears they may have the gumption to tackle the hard issues at hand and I for one hope they are successful in their efforts.
