Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. As we highlighted Thursday, Connecticut’s Senator Christopher Murphy took time out of his busy day to write a letter to Rupert Murdoch trying to persuade him that letting Fox Sports televise the NRA 500 from the Texas Motor Speedway would somehow be beyond the pale. As Matt in FL relays below, while the network still plans to air the race this evening, they’re doing everything they can to hide the name sponsor affiliation . . .

I can find no evidence of today’s NASCAR being referred to as the NRA 500. Even the article where they talk specifically about CT Sen. Chris Murphy asking FOX not to broadcast it never actually calls it the NRA 500, it’s referred to as the “NASCAR Sprint Cup race sponsored by the National Rifle Association” and the “NASCAR Sprint Cup race from Texas Motor Speedway.”

The Results page has it listed as “2013 NASCAR Racing at Texas,” but if you click the dropdown to look at previous races, they’re all listed by their sponsors, “STP Gas Booster 500,” “Auto Club 400,” “Food City 500,” etc.

The Schedule page has it listed as “Nascar racing at Texas.”  Every single other race is listed by sponsor name.

In not one single place anywhere on FOX’s site can I find it referred to as the “NRA 500.” This is especially noticeable to people that follow NASCAR, as NASCAR and their reporters normally don’t ever miss a chance to hammer the sponsor’s name. I’ve seen commentators successfully mention the sponsor three times within one sentence.

The story where they addressed Chris Murphy’s demands said, “Fox officials declined comment Thursday. The NASCAR Sprint Cup race from Texas Motor Speedway will be broadcast as scheduled.” They may still be going to broadcast it as scheduled, and you may even see a mention or two of the NRA during the broadcast where it can’t possibly be avoided, but it sure seems they’re taking the chickenshit route and keeping it as quiet as humanly possible.

It may not seem like a big deal to many people, and some on our side probably even see it as a good thing at not stirring up the crazies, but I think it’s pretty crappy behavior, and if I was the NRA and NASCAR took my money and let FOX pull this crap, I’d be pretty hot.

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61 COMMENTS

  1. Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of sponsorship and advertising?

    I wonder if the NRA could sue for breach of contract?

    • Not if they take the money and fail to run the ads. But they’re not like that. We all know Fox is all patriotic and moral, right?

    • The NRA sponsored the race, an event which takes place independently of media coverage; they didn’t pay Fox.

      Fox in turn paid Texas Motor Speedway for the righ to televise the race; how they do so is their business.

      Advertisers paid Fox; Fox had better run what they agreed to run, else face the Judge.

      That said, it’s pretty crappy behaviour.

      • This is what I sent to fox sports at http://msn.foxsports.com/feedback

        Let them know they screwed up

        I can’t believe fox caved to Sen Murphy’s demands in regards to the NRA 500. If people who watch NASCAR were offended by the NRA sponsoring the race Sen Murphy and the anti gun lobby would have asked NASCAR fans to boycott the race, but they didn’t because the knew it wouldn’t work due to the lack of support for their cause in the NASCAR fan base. So now even fox caves to the liberal media and Bloomberg, instead of siding with the majority of people who make up your market share. Yet another reason not to watch fox.

    • This has the most to to do with the 1st amendment. Like guns without ammunition, freedom of speech without a voice is a useless appendage. Sen. Murphy knows what he is doing, trying to silence any opposition to his viewpoint. Murphy take big about a “national debate” but doesn’t plan on letting anyone that disagrees with him speak,all to create the illusion that there is only his side of the conversation. If NASCAR is going to play this game I can live without them.

  2. What do you think? Do they get a blindfold and a cigarette, a meal, or will that create a backlog?

  3. What we need is our own gold backed currency.Well see if the sponsors stand for that when the Pro 2A states are the only ones with real currency.

  4. Time Warner Cable in my part of NC has it listed on channel 1150 as “Sprint Cup: NRA 500”

    • The DirecTV guide here in CO has “NASCAR Racing” as the main guide entry. In the description, it shows:
      “Sprint Cup: NRA 500” From Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas.

      • Oddly, gun hater Comcast also has it listed as “The Sprint Cup NRA 500 at Texas Motor Speedway”

        I’m shocked.

        • I live in an area that uses Comcast. If they are truly anti-gun than I’ll switch to dish. Why do you say they are antis?

  5. Fox is a faux conservative network. It’s all perception. It’s in place so conservatives feel like they have a news outlet. Rupert Murdock is Australian and has no vested interest in caring about our liberty, period.

    • The Fox network and Fox sports are not conservative. Fox News channel is more conservative because Murdoch was going after an under served market. It was a business decision.

      • Murdoch is an oligarch. Nothing more. He cares not one whit about us proles, save for our money.

    • I’ve reluctantly come to agree with you. I formerly liked and respected Bill O’Reilly–right up until the evening this week that he stated his support for universal firearms registration in a conversation with Lou Dobbs. He wants, so he says, to levy 10-year Federal prison terms on anyone who possesses an unregistered firearm as a means of controlling ‘gun violence.’

      Please recall, as he apparently does not, that convicted felons cannot be compelled to register their firearms, as that would, according to the SCOTUS, be a violation of their 5th-Amendment rights. Thus, only regular folks who do not comply with an unconstitutional and illegal order to register their firearms would fall prey to this law.

      This man is no conservative. He is a fraud, and I shall not watch his program again.

  6. Murdoch is a foreigner. He probably thinks that the Second Amendment has something to do with graven images — like a picture of Mort Zuckerman.

  7. AT&T U-Verse has it listed as NASCAR Sprint Cup but in the description it shows “NRA 500”

  8. We already know nascar doesn’t like the 1st amendment
    I guess they don’t like the 2nd either
    I agree that fox is just the pretend conservative network

  9. Comcast cable lists it as NASCAR Racing, but if you open the details it says Sprint Cup NRA 500. I don’t know if this is normally the case because I don’t follow NASCAR.

  11. The NASCAR website lists everything as the NRA 500. I do follow NASCAR, and website-wise, nothing is different than any other sponsor’s race.

    Anyone wanna place bets on a future retaliatory Brady Campaign 400?

    • Yeah, I forgot to add that to my email when I wrote it. After looking at foxnews.com, one of my first thoughts was that maybe NASCAR did some quiet thing to nullify the sponsorship, so I checked nascar.com, and saw they still had it listed by name. My cable company also has it listed as the NRA 500. As I said above, I just found it interesting that foxnews.com had scrubbed every mention of the sponsor from their site, which is blatantly obvious when compared to every other race this season.

    • No. You wind it up like a Flintstone’s child’s toy.

      All the excitement of watching paint dry, combined with the skillset of professional putt-putt golf. Oh yeah, using more primitive equipment than hackey-sack.

      Effen snorefest.

  14. The contempt I feel for an elected officially using his position to censor a broadcast and step on free enterprise is immense, and further that any media would bow to any baseless government pressure based in limited opinion is sheer cowardice. This is an abuse of position and authority and any who play the game are cowards. Sponsors spend their money to be seen and heard, and if the words of government employee can void a legal business contract because that employee SIMPLY DOESN’T LIKE ONE OF THE PARTIES INVOLVED shit has gone horribly wrong.

  17. guy guys realize that fox, like the NBCs, CNN, and others, are owned by the same 5 parent companies?

    it amazes me how many expect fox to somehow be the exception when it comes to defending our liberties. they’re not. The only interest they have is their perception to those that butter their bread and their shareholders.

  18. Speaking of guns and advertising during my vacation in Destin, Fl I was pleasantly surprised to see an ad for a local gun range and one other gun related commercial. Now, growing up in Comunistecut I would never see such things but we dont even have that sort of thing here in West TN. Go Florida!

  19. They just came back from break and said “welcome back to NASCAR on FOX, sponsored by Budweiser.” OK.

  20. I tape every race and I usually fast forward until someone crashes, and then I’ll replay the crash a few times. I’ve watched the entire broadcast so far tonight and not once have they mentioned or shown anything about the NRA that I’ve seen. Maybe I missed somthing but the NRS is getting royally screwed.

  21. This a total crock of crap.
    I have heard the NRA mentioned on air at least once.
    I sure hope the NRA suits the crap out of Fox.
    Better yet maybe Nascar wont renew their contract with Fox for next year.
    ESPN does a much better job of it anyway.

  22. I’m done with NASCAR and Fox, screw them! I noticed that Sirius is calling it the NRA 500 though…

  23. So far, with 17 laps to go, the ONLY mention of the NRA that I’ve noticed was when Karl Malone issued the command to start your engines.

  26. This has the most to to do with the 1st amendment. Like guns without ammunition, freedom of speech without a voice is a useless appendage. Sen. Murphy knows what he is doing, trying to silence any opposition to his viewpoint. Murphy talks big about a “national debate” but doesn’t plan on letting anyone that disagrees with him speak,all to create the illusion that there is only his side of the conversation. If NASCAR is going to play this game I can live without them.

  27. I didn’t watch every moment of the race, but besides Karl Malone’s mention of the NRA in having the drivers start their engines, the announcers did mention, twice, at 50 minutes after the hour “NRA 500”. Some have said they were contractually obligated to say that once per hour, and perhaps that’s what they did… but not a single graphic onscreen with “NRA” in any phrase. I’m guessing that without Senator Murphy’s whining there would have been the normal mentioning of the race sponsor many of the times they referred to the race, including graphics.

    I really hate these disingenuous ignorant politicians and can only wish them the worst for their future in politics and an early forced retirement. And Fox sucks for caving.

    • For what it’s worth, the sports announcer for the local (Dallas) FOX outlet did use the NRA 500 name 3 times in the 30 seconds or so of local news coverage they had after the race. In fact it seems he went out of his way to say it.
      I think I heard the booth announcers say it once during the race.
      It’ll be interesting to see who sues whom.

      Paul

  28. Apparently, Kyle Busch using the word “guns” while communicating with his crew was bleeped out??? The word “guns” is now a 4 letter word

  29. When Karl Malone started the race he screamed NRA 500 in a way that nobody ever has before saying start your engines.

  30. Also they didn’t show Busch on TV with his two revolver shooting them in the air, just like every winner in the past has done and been shown doing.

  31. I have watched enough NASCAR races to know that this was a Very deliberate COS.
    Never has the main sponsor of the race been spoken of so little by ANY major broadcast network.
    Seems like when NRA was mentioned, it was at the more local track level and ‘leaked’ on air. You can’t control Carl Malone, but you can control your
    announcers and all your fancy graphics.

    Hell if the sponsor was Trojans they would have had the logo bannering the on screen leaderboard, announcers would have been making balloon animals with them in their mid race reports, and would have had a CG Trojan guy riding a horse at every commercial segway.

    Its as if even mentioning a gun is a bad word these days. Sad times we live in.

  32. If ‘We The People’ want to preserve our rights, especially the 1A and 2A, we can only do so by exercising them fully, and immediately.

    Americans are only a heartbeat away from slavery.

    Act now, or never act.

  34. Fox News raves about Bill O’Reilly and how it and he posts opposing views, allegedly conservative in nature. O’Reilly dodged the draft by running to England like another (in)famous Bill.

  35. I skimmed over the comments & seen one person mention this and I’ll reconfirm it.

    The sponsorship of the race was an “At Track” sponsorship, it was not the “Broadcast” sponsorship. The way these things work is the sponsor pays the track, then if they also want their name/branding mentioned during the TV/Radio broadcast they have to pay (sponsor) the broadcast as well.

    This is not the first time it’s happened & won’t be the last time this season either and it’s not just NASCAR that it happens in it’s pretty much all televised motorsports. Another example of this is that often times Friday at the tracks are sponsored by a local company, for example at my local track Pocono the events on Friday are part of “Weis Markets Pole Day” with Weis Markets being the sponsor of all Friday events yet you never hear them mentioned on the TV coverage because they’re simply an “At Track” sponsor & not a “Broadcast” sponsor.

    So in short there is no conspiracy, no agenda, no hidden message, it’s just simply how that part of the sponsorship works.

    • That’s an interesting point. I’m not disputing it, but do you know of any other “at track” sponsors for whom the race is named on the top-tier Sprint Cup circuit who weren’t also the broadcast sponsor? I’m not saying it’s never happened, but I don’t recall watching a Winston/Sprint Cup “So-and-so 500” in the past where the “So-and-so” part was so obviously left out.

      I will note that as of just now when I looked, the foxsports.com Results page that I linked in my original email at the top of this post now has the race listed as the “NRA 500” instead of the “2013 Nascar Racing at Texas” that it had yesterday morning.

      • I do know that since ESPN came back into the sport several years ago they hardly mention the “at track” sponsor on their Cup broadcasts during their part of the season.

  36. It’s time the Wussy “Journalists” come to understand this one FACT… If it weren’t for the 2nd Amendment, The Bill of Rights would not Exist. The 2nd Amendment was not written to protect a Citizen’s Right to Hunt. It was written to protect Our Republic from Tyranny.

  37. I was at the track for the “generic stock car racing entity” NRA 500 Saturday night. If you’ve been to one, you know the “generic stock car racing entity race teams” have trailers full of their crap…shirts, hats, shot glasses…etc for sale. There was a “NRA Experience” tent which let you take your picture in front of another “picture of packed stands/bleachers”…meh.
    There was no NRA trailer or booth selling hats, t-shirts, lighters, mugs…the stuff you see on the NRA store website -without the shameless “generic stockcar racing entity” plugs…disappointing -guess the “generic stock car racing entity” didn’t want competition for their texas nra 500 t-shirts and pins which were nearly sold out two hours before the race started.
    BTW, for the first time since 08′ we sat in traffic on a main highway to get into the track. I have not seen that many people at TMS since 08’…even the back stretch stands were open and populated which hasn’t been a guarantee in the last few years. They’re never open for the open wheel events due to popularity of the league in the region. So either the economy has turned around or the Pro 2A rights folks showed up big time to support the rights and freedoms spelled out in the Bill of Rights…you decide which is easier to believe

  38. Did anyone catch that a fella in the infield shot himself during this race? Medical examiner ruled it a suicide. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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