How camshaft acquired cachet
When the United States Tennis Association wanted to stir a racket with a new promotional campaign this spring, it turned to stock-car driver Jeff Gordon. Mr. Gordon, attired in his familiar fireproof race suit, brandishes a racket in the year-long, national advertising campaign aimed at heightening interest in recreational tennis.
Such notions would have been unthinkable as recently as a decade ago. Now, though, everyone, from the patrician tennis set to the pop- culture mavens at "Saturday Night Live," wants a piece of NASCAR. Long dismissed outside the South as the Land of Bubba, stock-car racing now carries mainstream cachet.
Which explains why Gordon was tapped to host "SNL" last year - and why he's become a staple on other talk shows.
"Coming into [the sport], I didn't expect a lot of things that have happened," says Gordon, a handsome multimillionaire who also happens to be a four-time NASCAR season champion. "I never expected to be cohost on TV shows like '[Live With] Regis and Kelly' or 'Saturday Night Live.' I never dreamed of commercials on television and the number of fans that follow our sport."
Those loyal fans are eager to snap up whatever Gordon may be pitching. It's also a familiar scene for on-track rivals such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart, and Ryan Newman - all of whom are also lining up atypical endorsements (beyond the sport's auto-related staples) and appearances in TV shows and movies.
Last fall, VH1 aired a fawning, all- access special centered on Mr. Earnhardt, being whisked by limousines and private jets from one autograph appearance to another across the country. He found time during the show to hang out with his rock-star pals from 3 Doors Down, as well. Another rocker, Sheryl Crow, included Earnhardt in one of her music videos.
Industry experts say the newfound acceptance isn't a sudden shift. Instead, it's the result of a mammoth push during the past decade to put NASCAR squarely in the American mainstream.
And just what has NASCAR got under the hood? An audience, according to internal research, of 75 million fans, 40 percent of them female, with almost half earning $50,000 or more annually. The top-tier Nextel Cup series, racing's big leagues, trails only the National Football League when it comes to TV ratings, considered the lifeblood of any league.
Three years ago, the death of its biggest star, seven-time season champion Dale Earnhardt, the father of Earnhardt Jr., generated enormous awareness at the same time a new TV deal with Fox and NBC Sports began.
"You put the increased visibility with the added sophistication of the drivers and the companies today and this is what you get," says Tim Frost, president of Frost Motorsports, a consulting firm in Chicago.
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