NASCAR vs. Football: Which Sport Is More Important to the South?: An article from Southern Cultures 18:4, Winter 2012

By Daniel S. Pierce

The outlandish stories of the antics of early stock car racers immediately attracted me. Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall hauling liquor from Dawsonville to Atlanta one night and winning races the next day in the same car; Fonty Flock winning the Southern 500 wearing Bermuda shorts and argyle socks; his brother Tim racing with a monkey—named Jocko Flocko—in his racecar."

This article appears in the Winter 2012 issue of Southern Cultures. The full issue is also available as an ebook.

Southern Cultures is published quarterly (spring, summer, fall, winter) by the University of North Carolina Press. The journal is sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for the Study of the American South.

• Language: English
• Publisher: UNC Center for the Study of the American South
• Release date: Nov 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469608419

Daniel S. Pierce

Daniel S. Pierce is professor of history at the University of North Carolina Asheville. His previous books include Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France.

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ESSAY

NASCAR vs. Football

Which Sport Is More Important to the South?

a debate between

Daniel S. Pierce and Harvey H. Jackson III

Jackson: Football. Nothing else in the South can match it. Not even NASCAR. Spring practice, Bethune-Cookman College, 1943, photographed by Gordon Parks, courtesy of the collections of the Library of Congress.

The debate that follows first aired as part of South Carolina ETV’s Take on the South series, produced for the University of South Carolina Institute for Southern Studies. Daniel S. Pierce and Harvey H. Jackson III have kindly modified their discussion for our pages.

DANIEL S. PIERCE ON NASCAR

Sixteen years ago my answer to this question would have been simple, emphatic, and a no-brainer: football, no question. While I have the great distinction of being an individual who was cut from the middle school football team twice—when they didn’t even ordinarily cut—I grew up steeped in the sport. I played sandlot football every Sunday afternoon in the fall for at least twenty years, had two brothers who excelled at high school football, and one that played at a small college and then coached the sport for thirty years. The first big-time football game I ever attended was the 1969 Sugar Bowl, where the Archie Manning–led Ole Miss Rebels defeated my beloved Arkansas Razorbacks. My graduate degrees are from institutions—the University of Alabama and the University of Tennessee—much better known for producing SEC and NCAA championship football teams and NFLers than historians. As for NASCAR, when I noticed it at all, I was mystified as to how anyone could sit around for three hours and watch a bunch of redneck mouth-breathers make left turns.

Then in August 1994, I went to my first stock car race—not any old race, but the night race at Bristol Motor Speedway. It is hard to describe what I encountered on that summer night. I was astounded by