Cynical Cinema

I like Dale Earnhardt Jr. He’s a charming and interesting guy, seems really friendly and smart, and he’s certainly a good NASCAR driver. But that being said, I am a little confused about his inclusion in the ESPN SportsCentury Greatest Athletes collection. The Earnhardt Jr. SportsCentury comes out on DVD today, July 29th, from Alliance Films. The same day, another SportsCentury about Earnhardt senior comes out. That one I get. Another one is being released, about Jeff Gordon. I get that one as well. And the other big NASCAR release is 3: The Dale Earnhardt Story, which is an ESPN made-for-TV movie starring Barry Pepper as Earnhardt senior, and jammed with bonus features. I get this too.

But SportsCentury is all about the greatest athletes in history. And setting aside the debates about whether race-car drivers are “athletes”, or NASCAR vs. Formula One, and all that business, I’m still confused. SportsCentury has, understandably, profiled Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, Jim Thorpe, Jim Brown, Jesse Owens, Babe Didrikson, Martina Navratilova, Jerry Rice. All of this I get. I even understand putting Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Jeff Gordon in this company. But Earnhardt Jr.? This year, Earnhardt Jr. is sitting in second in the points standings for Hendrick Motorsports. (I did some wikipedia research.) But this SportsCentury Greatest Athletes profile came out in 2006. (In fact, it was the last ESPN SportsCentury program that aired.)

By 2006, Earnhardy Jr. had one third place finish on the season and one fifth place. The other years, he had finished 48th, 11th, 16th, 8th, and 19th. So…how does he qualify as one of the “Greatest Athletes” ever? Even the DVD itself doesn’t seem able to answer that. The entire show seems concerned with showing that Earnhardt Jr. could well become an amazing driver. And of course, much of the program talks about his father. So…is that how he got profiled? Because his dad was that big and famous? Or because they had already profiled so many sports figures that they ran out of really great ones? Is that why the show was taken off the air? I wish this DVD would answer at least one of these questions, but it doesn’t.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 12:16 am and is filed under 2006, NASCAR, ESPN, Biography, TV series, Documentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.