Word: nascars
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...NASCAR nation, Dale Earnhardt has been front-page news every Sunday of every race season, and some Sundays in between. For the rest of Americans, he was a name they knew, the emblem of a sport they'd seen here and there but probably didn't know too much about...
...Then Earnhardt's black No. 3 Chevy hit the wall on the final lap of the first and biggest race of the year, the Daytona 500, which this year was also the kickoff for a new era for NASCAR. Now, there won't be many weeks when TIME.com awards the Person of the Week posthumously. But the title recognizes echoes as much as men, and this was the week the stock-car-racing world spent stumbling around with its heart ripped...
...Sports rise on their personalities, as the NBA did on the wings of Bird, Magic and Michael in the '80s and '90s, and NASCAR on Sunday lost its brightest star. But new levels of popularity (and demographic profitability) are not built on 49-year-olds. Earnhardt's old-school cred might have come in handy for a sport that can expect trouble from its traditionalists the more successful it becomes, and for a true NASCAR believer there was always Earnhardt to cut the bitter taste of pretty-boy superstar Jeff Gordon...
...Earnhardt was the grandstands, the blue-collar throngs that fill them week in and week out, leaving rivers of spilt beer and spit tobacco in their wake. He was one of them. But NASCAR is now after the rest, all the people in America that Dale Earnhardt was not, and the circuit should count itself lucky that mainstream America is getting at least one good long look at him while they...
...NASCAR will certainly wish it had him and his hirsute grin to do commercials on its new network home, and keep the old school alive. It will mourn Dale Earnhardt, and miss him. But he did the promo of a lifetime Sunday when he hit that wall between the third and fourth turn...