Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

There have only been 3 times (that I can recall) that an Iowa or and Iowa State game have occured on the same night at the Late Model Nationals. The Raceway has that scheduled a year in advance. While the Iowa and ISU games are scheduled years in advance, they don't release the kick off times until at least 2 weeks before the game. IF either team is doing well (and that's not been the case the past few years) ESPN, ABC, Big Ten Network, Fox, or any other TV network picks the best games to show in primetime. Sometimes the Iowa and Iowa State games have been the primeimte national TV game. Nothing Knoxville can do about that. This past fall Iowa State played Texas Tech in a night game at Ames. Yes Knoxville HS sometimes has had a home game on the Friday night of the LM Nationals. I know because I do the play-by-play. NONE of the school staff has ever complained about the LMs being in town that week. It's money for the town because people from out of Knoxville spend their money here.

While Vande is usually pretty accurate in his posts, this particular claim is not even remotely close to being accurate.

And by the way, the "taxi cab" races, as some of you call them, are better races than the sprint car nationals.

come sit in the stands during the LM Nationals and count the kids....I'll stand by my asertation that 99.9% of the fans during the LM Nationals are age 45+ (I'm one of the younger people there, and I'm 38). The only people looking at or buying souvenir's are adults (it actually reminds me a lot of what I saw when I went to the Daytona 500, a lot of adults in their 50's acting like they are in their late teens and early 20's binge drinking).

The Late Models bring an entirely different fanbase to Knoxville, but if the local fans were needed to make the LM Nationals successful, they'd need to move the date to mid-summer (July) IMO.

I agree, the races are MUCH MUCH better than the sprint nationals (it reminds me of the quality of Nationals in the 1980's, there is a big disparity between the good teams and everyone else which makes it easier for drivers to come from 10th to 1st in their heat races). That is now starting to change for teh LM's as well as more and more parts and pieces are becoming store bought instead of manufactured by the teams.

When was the last time that the Hawk/Cyclone game was a prime time game?

Honestly, I don't remember it being a night game anytime in the last 15 yrs.

I have been to every LM Nationals and your percentage is no where near close. 99.9% would mean that 999 out of every 1000 people at the LM Nationals is 45+, which is not even remotely close. At most 70% (doubt, if it is near that high) of the attendees are 45+. I see numerous young couples that have 2 or 3 kids that attend, plus several other fans that are definitely not 45 years old.

I can only go off what I see while I ATTEND the race.

Last year, my 9 year old son was the only kid in the ENTIRE SECTION that we sat in (Section H) every single night.

Ask someone to do a check on how many kids tickets were sold for the LM Nationals, you'd be surprised at how few (unlike the Sprint Nationals where some groups buy a child ticket for the extra room, there is no need to do so as of yet with the Late Models (and man, they complain on message boards about the ticket prices being too HIGH for the LM Nationals too because they only pay $42 to go to Eldora for the World 100 (in the past, the World 100 was a one day show spread out over 2 days (time trials the first day, heats and features the second day).

I'd be surprised if there are actually more than 10% of the crowd during the Sprint Nationals that are kids either (remember, kids are 12 and under, not "they look like a kid to me" age).