Final Reflections and Invitation to the Museum

as things progressed more money came into the sport you know um instead of uh um I I think that's one of the reasons the grandstands aren't as full today as they used to be because you know um it's it's changed so much and you know sometimes change is good sometimes change isn't for the better And and you know, I think that a lot of times um you know, they they've gotten away from what made NASCAR what NASCAR is. And they're trying to get a different demographic. They're trying to expand, which I understand cuz you have to grow or you die. But uh you know, you can't alienate uh your fan base that brought you where you are. And uh you know, um you have to come up with some kind of happy medium. All those little interactions add up. How many times people were just instantly hooked with Richard Patty or Bobby Ellis and sat there for two hours to give them an autograph and wasn't mean. Yeah. How many thousands of times did they do that over 10 15 years? How how many stories were told by people who went home and said, "Oh, these guys are super cool." What was the exponential effect of all of that? Probably millions of people. Yeah. And put butts in the grand stands. Well, yeah. Absolutely. And then you look at the things like uh when you uh the things that R.J. Reynolds did at the races. Um you know the uh uh the Winston Pavilion uh you know you if you were 21 years old you could go in they showed movies they they had the sample program where you know you could trade a uh pack of marbers for a carton win. And uh you know it uh um that was one of the things people don't realize. You know R.J. Reynold's philosophy and my father's philosophy was you know we don't encourage anybody to smoke but if you do smoke we encourage you to smoke our products and uh you know um a lot of people my mother and father both smoked team Wayne Robertson that took my dad's place he didn't smoke I've never smoked and so I mean you know it it wasn't a prerequ pre prerequisite that you had to smoke to work in sports marketing that's an interesting question I didn't even think to ask that's just Like you never know. That's why we ask questions to see where it goes. Like Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's like I