Cairo, NY -- My buddies and I were seven or eight years old the first time we heard the word versus.  We wondered what the word meant as we walked the block-and-a-half from our building on East 21st Street to the RKO Kenmore on Church Avenue just off the corner of Flatbush. 

The Kenmore put on a kid-priced sci-fi and/or horror double feature every Saturday morning and on that particular Saturday the main attraction was Earth Versus the Flying Saucers, which turned out to be less scary than most of the Cold War Era message flicks that invariably stuck to one of two themes -- that nuclear fallout was mutating huge scary monsters or that aliens were coming to destroy our planet if we continued to test and stockpile nukes.

By the time we had finished watching the two full-length movies, eight cartoons and coming attractions we were no closer to understanding the meaning of the word versus than we were as we walked to the theatre.  King Kong Versus Godzilla and Kramer Versus Kramer were years away, as was the ability, as Rowan and Martin would say, to look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls.

When I read yesterday that the bulk of f-inheritor's races will be telecast on Versus it was like deja vu all over again.  "What the heck is Versus?" I thought out loud as I scrolled down the page.

Kidding aside, open-wheel fans from both sides of the Mergification Support argument realize that a Versus TV package is inferior to one that combines ABC and ESPN coverage despite what at least one of the shill literati would have them believe.

Un-discussed or obfuscated thus far, however, is the larger message that ABC is sending directly to the Speedway inheritor: 

"Yeah, at this point we still see value in having the TV rights to the Indy 500 and, to get that, we're willing to air an additional four of your shows.  But be warned that we are aware that your series is coming apart at its seams so you better shape it up or be shipped out."

As the fallout from inferior TV coverage trickles down, sponsorship will mutate into Indy only support with, perhaps, race-to-race deals that may be tied to any given race's first-line TV coverage.  With a shortage of full-season sponsorships, team participation and car count will certainly shrink -- eventually down to a small enough number to finally put an end to the MINO madness.

You can put on 35-cent double features or give away tickets at every race venue but you can't make people watch your show on TV if they don't want to, or if they are unable to tune in even if they do want to watch it.

After all these split years now it's down to IRL Versus IRL.  For a change, this renegade scribe will be rooting for both sides.

Archive