NASCAR, stadiums and Vince McMahon this week.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-nascar-extra-payment-2024-race-brandon-johnson-20240123-o3fbsmapwfhjrgl7re4jq7qfni-story.html
https://www.jayski.com/2024/01/23/nascar-to-pay-chicago-additional-money-to-host-street-race/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_WWE
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1119010/1/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_McMahon
https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1503429/vince-mcmahon-accuser-janel-grant-issues-first-statement-since-filing-civil-suit/
Local Forecast – Slower by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3988-local-forecast—slowerLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Hello and welcome to episode 106 of driver suit blog radio as always I’m your host David G Firestone uh we had a bit of a technical snafu last week where my microphone just abruptly stopped working for a few seconds during the first segment uh I’d like to apologize for that I think I
Fixed the problem and we’re good to go with that out of the way I did watch the Rolex 24 last week and I loved it like I said before I’m not an endurance car guy I’m not a sports car guy but this was always a great week for racing with the
Rolex 24 on The Clash within a 7-Day period I’ll talk about The Clash next week now a news article came out as I was writing the notes for this story apparently Formula 1 is applied for a trademark for the uh Chicago Grand Prix um I don’t think the Chicago Grand Prix
Is going to happen looking at what happened with the Las Vegas debacle is a factor and also I just don’t see the city or the citizens of Chicago getting into it as much now with that let’s talk about our big news story about the Chicago street
Race so for the 2023 Chicago Street Race Chicago spent six Chicago spent 3.5 million on overtime for construction cost overtime for police of which Nascar only paid about $62,000 well in a new deal that was announced last week Chicago will get more money according to Chicago tribun
Article by ad quid Link in the description quote when mayor Brandon Johnson announced NASCAR would be returning to the streets of downtown Chicago this summer he CED a better deal for the people of Chicago by reducing the setup and takeown time and securing extra money to to give us the ability to
Pay for some of the costs that occurs as a race as a result of the race now such a deal has not been codified between the city and NASCAR according to open records requests received by the Tribune earlier this month rather NASCAR and the city have
Only so far reached a verbal commit in which said in which Nascar said it would ship in an extra $2 million payment this year and that the and next that the Johnson Administration said it hopes it will help the city turn to profit on the event the additional 2 million is still
Fell short of the 3.5 million overtime and construction costs various City departments spent on the inaugural waste last summer these costs included 2.16 million for the city’s transportation department on Ro improvements extra pay 1.4 million police OT and $50,000 in OT for City Emergency Management workers included a base to including a
Base $500,000 fee to transform the streets around Grand Park into a 2.2 Mile racetrack and $1 120,000 for the district’s cut of ticket food beverage and merchandise sales on top that off NASCAR said it paid 1.8 million in Amusement taxes to the city and county for tickets sold
Uh with a study released by NASCAR with this while a study released by the city’s tourism arm true Chicago showed the 2023 event generated nearly 109 million econom and impact that was less than the estimated 1.1 1138 million NASCAR initially projected and those dollars don’t go directly to paying the hard cost of
Overtime and construction end quote now with the big TV numbers that NASCAR generated ated for the street race it’s clear that everyone involved Chicago NASCAR and NBC want this race to continue and it’s not hard to understand why NASCAR wants to Plate Chicago and its citizens now if those numbers are
Similar to 2024 as they were in 2023 that is yet to be seen it’s clear though that most involved want the race to come back but the contract renewal hasn’t the condra G hasn’t been finished yet but that is an issue for another day now there is an issue about this in
Terms of Chicago Sports because the story came out at a time where the city is facing not one but two teams unhappy with their stadiums now I’ve discussed Soldier Field and the dump that it is before well apparently the Arlington Park deal has fallen through because Arlington
Heights does not want to be responsible for paying for the stadium now they’re trying to get now the Bears want a new stadium directly south of Soldier Field and while this is going on the Chicago White Socks have decided they want a new stadium as well this highlights a problem with the
Logic of why a stadium is needed look Soldier Field and guaranteed rage field the the Bears and the white socks homes respectively aren’t brand new shiny toys they’re certainly serviceable I mean they don’t have to share their stadiums with other teams they have their own in-house Stadium the owners want to brand new
Shiny toy stadiums to show off to their billionaire buddies and they want the taxpayers and the fans to pay for it now this is nothing new look at what happened uh in Baltimore a few years ago but the owners also make it clear that they feel as though the conditions
Of the stadiums are the reason fans aren’t coming to their events no no no no no no no no ha to be the one to break it to you but it’s not the stadiums that are driving the fans away it’s the lack of onfield success that drives the fans
Away both the Bears and the white socks are the definition of mediocrity over the last few years their onfield success hasn’t been great and the fans have little of any reason to care so let’s ask the question and discuss the elephant in the room if the fans have no real reason to
Care why should they why should they buy tickets for a team they know is probably going to lose why make an effort to get to the stadium to watch it life if you probably aren’t going to if you’re probably going to be disappointed I mean these are all
Questions that need to be answered to get the fans back now the Bears have a giant fan base the white socks don’t have a big fan base and their 2023 record of 61 and 101 doesn’t Inspire fan loyalty the stadiums aren’t running fans off the teams are it’s been shown that
Fans will come to sit in Old stadiums with the team is winning championships as they have for centuries you need to do more to get the fans to care and you need to do more to get the team success then you can ask for a shiny new
Stadium do you honestly think the United Center would have been would have been built when it was if the Bulls weren’t winning championships hand over fist do you honestly think any of these new stadiums that have championship teams attached to them would have been built
No but the uh issue of not fans not caring brings up a point about bandwagon fans in Chicago this is also open to bandwagon [ __ ] in general because being a sports fan in Chicago You’re the definition of a fair weather fan I mean besides from the lack of
Onfield success from the Bears and the white socks the Cubs didn’t do much in the playoffs between 1984 and 2015 the Blackhawks were a joke in the NHL from 1961 to 2008 and the Bulls have not been going anywhere since 1998 when it looks like a Chicago team might
Actually do well fans will jump on the badwagon and for reasons I don’t understand this will piss off the Die Hard fans one of the worst things you could possibly be is a DI hard fan it’s one of the worst things you can be no matter what it is you’re a fan of
And I say this because they don’t realize it but they’re doing more harm than good and this is not just limited to sports mind you this is across the board I’ve discussed the problems with diard fans before yes I get that you’re a fan of something I’m a fan of stuff
Too but your di hard fandom you don’t seem to see it as an OBS an unhealthy Obsession where everyone around you does everyone around you sees your unhealthy Obsession except you you know you’re you’re the kind of people who think that because you suffered through you know all the teams
Failures for years years when they finally win the championship you’re a better fan no it doesn’t there is nothing wrong with f again there’s nothing wrong with fans jumping on a team on board when a team gives their fans something to care about I mean you you think it makes you
The best fan the teams have no it isn’t sitting through years and Decades of Bad seasons doesn’t make you a better fan it makes you a obsessive buying every branded piece of merchandise doesn’t make you a better fan it makes you obsessive and again this mindset can do
You a lot more harm than good a lot of fandoms will often place the most obsessed in fans at the top of the hierarchy not realizing that they could run off casual and bandwagon fans I mean it’s not just limited to sports look at comic book movies look at
Star Trek look gets a Sci-Fi you have fans like one group of fans who just oh this was a fun movie and then you have the other fans who are you know they’ve analyzed every single frame of every single scene they can tell you the mistakes they can tell you the line
Flubs they can tell you this they can tell you that I’ve been to sci-fi conventions some of these fans scare the hell out of me some of these cosplayers scare the hell out of me their entire existence is devoted to their IP of choice I’m not that
Obsessive again I might seem like I’m a pass passionate fan of racing and wrestling my fandom is teame compared to some of these fans follow wrestlers on social media you’ll understand how crazy these fans are and that’s the problem Die Hard fans can ruin it for everyone else because these fans genuinely
Believe if you are not all in you’re not in at all do you honestly think before 2006 that anyone outside of the comic book Phantom knew who the Avengers were or knew who some of the lower some of the X-Men were no I’m glad that you read a lot of comics
I’m glad you’re a fan I’m glad you have something in your life but you’re obsessed get off the computer put down the DVD go outside take a walk I promise you there’s a world out there and you don’t have to come down on every single fan casual fan or bandwagon
Fan because you’re not as OBS they’re not as obsessed as you it’s mental illness it’s what it is and this is an issue because if you run off fans you’re your franchise isn’t going to be successful the more fans a franchise has the more money they make
And the more successful they are running off fans for not being as obsessed as you are does more damage than they’ll ever realize and they don’t care the fans will show up if you give them a reason to care bad on field performance will drive off fans super obsessed fans will drive
Off casual fans fans will leave if they don’t have a reason to care and they won’t come back that’s the problem you run when you let the obsessives run the fan base and you you know you don’t make the effort to get the fans to care that’s just how it
Is I frankly I stopped caring about Chicago baseball a long time ago and I don’t feel bad you know the Cubs and the white socks haven’t really been giving us reasons to care in the last few years sorry if they do well I’ll come back if they don’t I won’t
But I’m not going to be fully committed to something if I’m going to be disappointed and that’s exactly what the team owners don’t realize we don’t want to be committed and disappointed at the same time so when you start putting championship teams together and winning then we’ll
Give you a brand new shiny toy you want a toy earn it and the bears in the white socks haven’t figured this one out yet nor will they ever oh and the white socks are planning to go to Memphis I think it was like you’re going to have a fan base
There like like Memphis is going to give you again they were 61 and 101 last year they’re going to get not going to give you a $500 million or a billion dollar Stadium are you crazy earn earn our fandom back and you can have a new stadium that’s the deal I
Think we should propose with that I’m going to take my first break and we’re going to be talking about Vince McMahon Next So I’m back now we’re going to discuss Vince McMahon and the whole whole issues surrounding him that have been developing over the last few years and now this is a subject I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I should discuss because it’s a very touchy subject and justifiably so for some
People but the story has also exposed a few side effects that affect the wrestling industry as a whole so you’ve heard of Vince McMahon um his full name Vincent K McMahon he was the owner of WWE and I want to make a little bit of an I don’t
Know what the word for it is a correction many news outlets were claiming he was the founder of WWE now this really isn’t true the promotion known as WWE actually goes back to 1953 to the capital wrestling Corporation and sources conflict on whether it was Jess McMahon Vince’s
Grandfather or Vince J McMahon Vince’s father who founded the company but uh it was the New York territory back when wrestling was a series of small Regional promotions which was overseen by the national wrestling Alliance uh this system actually expanded actually was good until the 1980s until cable television came along which
I don’t care what people say it was the territory system was never going to survive cable television now the New York territory WWF was the strongest territory in wrestling at that time so in 1980 Vince McMahon Jr hereon referred to Simply as McMahon he founded Titan Sports Inc and bought the what is
Now the WWE from Vince Senor now now he had different ideas as to how wrestling should be run even though the parent company is no longer a thing um it Titan is still somewhat a part of WWE the big screen at events is called the Titantron and the former WWE
Headquarters in Stanford Conneticut was known as Titan Towers now Vince McMahon had like I said he had a very different idea as to how wrestling should be run and according to a 2014 article from Sports to link in the description quote in the old days there were these wrestling foms all over the
Country each with its own little Lord in charge each little Lord respected the rights of his neighboring little Lord no takeovers or raids were allows there were maybe 30 of these tiny Kingdoms in the US and if I hadn’t bought out my debt there would still be 30 of them fragmented and
Struggling I of course had no allegiance to these little Lords now after purchasing WWE in 1980 Vince used a combination of money star power pop culture syndication and luck to go from the New York territory to the top wrestling promotion in the world uh WWE also helped make pay-per-view of Mayor
Industry with WrestleMania other events and you can also argue that Jim Crockett promotions and others also helped but Vince is sort of the one given all of the credit on this one now even though other promotions fought back in the 80s and 90s Vince McMahon and WWE have proven to be the
Top Dog in wrestling to this day but as the old saying goes you can’t just describe something or discuss something based on how successful they were WWE is the biggest wrestling promotion in the world and a lot of fans a lot of wrestling fans hate WWE and the WWE Style with a
Passion uh ironically the Monday night Wars the end of the Monday night Wars in 2001 was one of the worst things that could have possibly happened to WWE since it really helped the Indie scene flourish because once WCW and ECW were gone there were a lot of wrestlers who didn’t
Have a job and they didn’t have a paycheck so you have all these little Regional promotions even local promotions just spouting up and it also it also led to the scum element in wrestling today that’s a disc that’s a discussion for another day um these the the Monday night wars did
Prevent any promotions from getting footholds but once that ended the Indie scene flourished now there are so many Indie promotions that they all cater to a different Niche wrestling fan interest which I’m not saying is a bad thing I think it’s good that they have devoted fan bases but the anti-wear in these
Territories well Vince McMahon’s SE P sentences have been revealed and I’m not going to go into the details but we had Rita charlton’s allegations on Lost in the 1980s uh there have been two separate incidents visits the tanning bars one in 2006 one and 2011 and then in 20122
Vince’s Vince’s activities came to light um according to Wikipedia link in the description quote the WWE board which McMahon controlled began investiga a $3 million hush money settlement paid over an alleged affair with a former employee of the company April 2022 the investigation also revealed other non-disclosure agreements related
To misconduct claims by other women in the company against McMahon and executive John laurenitis who’s a real piece of work himself totaling 12 million by October 2022 the WWE had disclosed 19.6 million in unrecorded payments that command made to settle sexual misconduct claims between 2006 and 2022 in June 2022 McMahon stepped down
As CEO in chairman of WWE but continued to oversee content development he later announced his retirement on July 12 2022 only to return six months later so let’s fast forward to earlier this year earlier in January Janelle Grant accused McMahon of sex trafficking in a very public lawsuit um apparently Grant
Had was one of these one of the one of the recipients of these ndas but Vince never finished paying her which is a bad move um she went into a series of accusations against McMahon laurenitis and Brock Lesner again Lesnar’s a real piece of work himself but I’m not going to discuss
Them here it’s just it’s too horrifying to discuss here well this led to Vince resigning a second time this time from ww and TKO these accusations also led to longtime Partners slim jim suspending their involvement though after McMahon resigned this was quickly reversed and to be honest with
You ju not as a only as a person but a WWE Fan I’m glad he’s gone and I hope he never comes back back WWE both on camera and behind the scenes is in a better place with Vince McMahon gone and I challenge you to find fans who disagree with me on
This the Vince MC the WWE style can be infuriating believe me there are some things that Vince likes and has done over the years as a wrestling promoter like putting Talent that’s just not ready to be on camera because of their size firing people who he not or not
Pushing people that he is a person didn’t like claudo castignoli currently in aw could have been a big star in WWE but Vince didn’t like him John Moxley look at all the WWE guys in aw who are there because Vince simply didn’t see anything in them and that’s
Also the that also expands to the um every other um released WWE wrestler now the whole story sucks but this has had a side of a side effect that most people outside of wrestling don’t understand like if you’re not a wrestling fan you don’t understand the WWE anti- WWE tribalism that’s been
Going on for the last few years not even few years the Indie scen in wrestling is full of anti- WWE fans well these fans were justifiably overjoyed and they justifi we rejoice it as downfall on social media a lot of Indie promoters were happy but Indie promoters need WWE to
Survive in this day and age in sports and I don’t care what sport we’re talking about you need a major nationally Vis league for smaller League to exists you simply in this day age could not have an indie scene without WWE and I discussed the um I discussed the death of the uh
Territory system previously but these once cable TV came along Indie promotions were dead they were done for it was always going to be who was the top Indie promotion that had a cable TV thing who was the top territory that had a cable TV deal well we found out now didn’t
We but every Indie wrestling promotion owes their existence to WWE because it gives them a reason to exist how can you be independently alternative to something if there’s nothing to rebel against how can you change the landscape if there’s no landscape to change that’s the issue here Indie fans can hate wrestling all
They want everyone knows that the wrestling industry as a whole is dependent on WWE’s survival and this tribalism has a side effect in this respect because while the WWE versus the Indies could be compared to Coke versus Pepsi there’s a major difference yes it’s well known that Coke and Pepsi
Are two enemies fighting for their piece of the pie but it’s been shown that if the pie S as threatened they will put aside their differences Pepsi alerted Coca-Cola to one of their former employees trying to sell them the secret formula a few years ago okay so they have done this
Before WWE versus the Indies isn’t the case if something came along and threatened the pie and WWE said we’re going to fight this headon because we want to protect the pie a lot of fans would hate them for it just because it’s the the big dog in town it’s the big dog in
Town it again if the pie itself was threatened and WWE said we’re going to do this to protect the industry fans and some maybe a few promoters would hate them for it I that’s the level of hatred that exists for WWE now from a fans perspective namely a
Casual fan um most most Indie wrestling fans are on the same level as Indie music fans or any film fans they they think they’re the smartest and best fans on the world for not liking anything mainstream but I hate to break it to you this idea negates the fact that a lot of
Independent music films and wrestling just aren’t for very good okay here’s a fun story from my college days um I took a radio course in college and I had my own show on campus radio for one semester when the other three people in my group dropped
Out now during that time we had gotten a sponsor in the form of a local music promoter who was running a small show in a bar on a Saturday night and I ended up getting a free ticket having nothing else to do I figured I’ll go check this out so I
Ended up going to the bar which wasn’t too far from my dorm met the promoter and I met the bands the like the the lead bands like the the the main three bands were really nice and they were really good the opening act which was clearly
Done as a favor by the promoter I cannot for the life of me understand how this would possibly happen otherwise their opening act was a bunch of spoiled Rich Suburban kids who clearly all listened independent music because they thought it made them cool they were snotty they were arrogant
They were questioning why I was there and they didn’t think I had what they called Indie cred and I’m sitting there just stewing listening to this because I’ve been promoting you this show on my radio show for the for like half a semester and you’re sitting there
Thanking me for this by calling me by basically saying that I’m not the same level of snob you are well as it turned out they were the open act for a reason they weren’t very good but that right there is how a lot of Indie fans act be it wrestling be it
Music be it film they have their favorites they know more than you they’re smarter than you they are better than you and if you don’t agree with them you’re an idiot They Don’t Really Care just because something is mainstream doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad I do a lot of beer sampling on my
Other YouTube channel I can do something from some local Brewery and I would hate it I could do something from a local Brewery and I’d love it I could do a nationally um I could do a national Mac ma brew and love it I could do a ma National macel
Brew and hate it I just I Jud I judge based on results as opposed to hype and a lot of them are like the Lisa Simpson like they have their own favorites they think they know everything but they’re not as smart as they think they are I’ll give everything a chance
Because that’s what enthusiasts do you could give something a chance and love it you could give something a chance and hate it but if you’re holding everything to a similar yard stick that’s what you get if you’re if if if they like something great if they not don’t like it oh well
But Indie snobs be it music wrestling or film are insufferable and that signifies how bad the Divide is between Indie wrestling fans and mainstream wrestling fans The Divide is so great between these promotions that if something came along and threatened the industry as a whole they wouldn’t be they wouldn’t ban
Together that’s just how bad has gotten I mean if the United States and the Soviet Union conted to fight Nazi Germany do you honestly think that every wrestling fan in the in the United States couldn’t team up to prevent a threat to their product come on um and the pro and
Again it’s possible to like something without being obsessed with it the obsessive fans don’t get this that’s why nobody likes them and realistically it’s never going to change I wish it would and with that I just can’t take any more today I’m done I’m gonna end things here I’ll be back
Next week I’m d f leave a like comment subscribe and I see you next Week
