Major League Baseball manages its seasons better than any sport. But, under the weight of unusual circumstances, horse racing does almost as well. Except for its wildly popular player draft in April, NFL football disappears once the Super Bowl is over. Likewise, NBA basketball and NHL hockey are, at best, three-season sports. Horse racing finds ways to engage its enthusiasts in stretches when its grind isn’t worth watching. It’s a credit to the NTRA, Breeders’ Cup Ltd. and The Jockey Club that the sport is able to make something of little when the action is boring, drawn-out and irrelevant. The Eclipse Awards is an excellent example.
Baseball is played in six months for most teams and seven for those that excel. But the manner in which the National Pastime entertains its fans is the model of constant engagement. Once the sting from champagne is no longer felt in the eyes of the World Series winners, baseball rolls out its MVPs, Cy Young Award winners and Rookies of the Year. Then the MLB owners hold their always eventful Winter Meetings, and, a bit later, the fire is lighted in what’s known as the Hot Stove League. Ultimately, pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training.
“Fans should have a chance to be a bigger part of the evening,” answered NTRA vice-president of communications Keith Chamblin in email, when asked if there was thought to making the announcement of Eclipse Awards more accessible to the public. But he also inferred that discussions relating to moving the presentation to a theater where thousands of the sport’s faithful could join in, as they can and do at the Academy Awards or the NFL player draft, were not under “serious consideration.”
The player draft has become so popular with fans that the League has moved it to prime-time and is thinking of taking it around from one NFL city to another and perhaps even to cities where the League has no team. “It’s on the table,” Commissioner Roger Goodell told NFL Network host Rich Eisen on Wednesday’s NFL Total Access. The NFL’s main source of revenue comes from television, but Goodell knows his product has value only if people are consumed by it.
“Should we ever move to a theater-like venue with greater fan involvement, then I think the accent will be on securing the very best location, which could eventually mean a more permanent home for the Eclipse Awards,” Chamblin noted, taking the side of efficiency. Understandably, the two businesses are at different points in their growth curve. One is zooming upward with $8 billion in revenues and the other, once the biggest sport in the country, has many empty grandstands and has faced double-digit declines in this decade. Nevertheless, horse racing’s away-from-the-racetrack activities might be the key to its renaissance.
Away from the track, the fans speculate from January to April on what horse will win the Kentucky Derby, wonder about whether or not the winner can move on to capture the Triple Crown as soon as the race is over and what predicaments are in store for the two-year-old mid-summer stars that emerge from the unknown at Saratoga and Del Mar. Once the “Win and You’re In” concept develops, it, too, will grace autumn with a topic of considerable observation. In the two most recent Novembers through Januaries, the Eclipse Awards has enhanced the prospect of beguiling verbal intercourse among horse racing’s audiences to the same extent that Cialis has introduced bathtub soaking as a form of sex for jaded spouses.
“Much of the drama and intrigue surrounding the Eclipse Awards the past two years has been created organically,” Chamblin correctly observed. “Such scenarios are very hard to manufacture,” he said. But true as that may be, there are steps that the organizers can take which would secure that the show had a bona fide permanence in the game’s chronology, rendering it a time of year when we think back to all that is good about horse racing and not what is wrong.
At least four nominated Eclipse Award horses, two of which have won Breeders’ Cup races, ran within a week of tonight’s presentation. Bringing horses of this ilk to a racecourse in the ceremony’s neighborhood by writing races that reward them extraordinarily, for example, might be one thing to think about. There are numerous ideas for developing the Eclipse Awards – adding Special Eclipse Awards or using the program for feting handicappers, writers, photographers and television producers aren’t among them.
In the last couple years, the Eclipse Awards and Breeders’ Cup World Championships have connected synergistically like they’ve never before. “It will be up to the presenters of the awards to try to capitalize on the increased interest going forward,” Chamblin said. What he should have said is, “If we don’t leverage the increased interest in the Eclipse Awards into a sustainable property, we’re not serving the sport properly.”
Vic Zast posts daily on Facebook.com/viczast and Twitter.com/viczast.
17 Jan 2011 at 10:47 am | #
Why would fans want to sit in a venue and “endure” the Eclipse Awards?
We already know “eastern-based horseflesh” is going to bring home the “Horse of the Year” hardware.
DRF and the eastern-based turf writers are individuals who “I have no respect for”.
Do we understand each other, Vic?
17 Jan 2011 at 12:33 pm | #
The horse racing public seems to be very interested in the Eclipse Awards, specifically in the Horse of the Year election. If properly reduced to emphasize the entertainment aspects, the announcement event could become a vehicle that reinforces all the good that occurred during the year, a kind of show-business styled retrospective.
The NFL is able to turn a player draft into a primetime TV Show and it packs the balcony of Radio City Music Hall with fans wanting to sit through the selection process. Last night’s Golden Globe Awards Show took the night in the TV ratings contest.
Niatross, your attitude of futility vis-a-vis East Coast bias in the voting is preventing
you from seeing the possibilities. It’s true that there are far fewer Eclipse Award voters in the West, but the East Coast voters aren’t coming to their decision on the ballot because of geographical prejudice.
17 Jan 2011 at 12:57 pm | #
Building the foundation of a house is “critical” before framing and drywalling the house. If the foundation is not sound, we all know what will happen to the house.
Vic,
Resolve the “geographical prejudice” (AKA: foundation of the house) before inviting fans to the Eclipse Awards.
17 Jan 2011 at 01:15 pm | #
Vic,
Last year you made the announcement that
Rachel Alexandra was going to win the Eclipse Award for HOY which was going to be held that night.
And you were absolutely correct.
Can you pass on any likewise information for this year’s vote.
I know that Bob Ehalt over at the NTRA.com site has a column out that says “Zenyatta Will Prevail” - meaning she will win the HOY tonight.
How about you?
17 Jan 2011 at 01:17 pm | #
Vic:
I do agree on the Eclipse Awards entirely, but I would be looking at moving the event to a much slower night on the calendar, perhaps the Friday preceding the NBA All-Star Game in February (also usually the Friday of Presidents Day weekend) when the NFL is done, there is limited college basketball (mainly the Ivy League and a couple of other smaller conferences) with maybe one game on ESPN that night (and a couple on ESPNU). Perhaps that Friday night could land the Eclipse Awards on ESPN2 given it is a relatively slow night for sports as a whole in the winter.
17 Jan 2011 at 02:00 pm | #
John, I wrote an HRI column entitled “Exit Polls Bode No” last Monday which spelled out where the votes for Zenyatta must come from if she is voted the Horse of the Year (see http://bit.ly/i0zYCF).
Based on the voting last year when she lost to Rachel Alexandra, Zenyatta must retain her dominance with West Coast and female voters, double the number of votes she received from Kentucky-based voters and find 20 more votes from the East Coast base, the largest voting block.
The vote this year should be much closer than last year. If Zenyatta loses the vote, I’m going to write a FastWords blog for HRI on Thursday or Friday entitled “Oh, my God, What have We Done?” about post-partum blues of the Blame backers.
Last year, I wrote a column after Zenyatta’s Zenyatta Stakes (Lady’s Secret) victory that she had the Horse of the Year sewn up. But keeping an ear to the ground when the vote was taken, I heard a lot of Blame being spoken.
John, you didn’t come hear to read the words of a fence-sitter. So, in a photo finish, I’ll predict “America’s Mare” gets it done this time around.
18 Jan 2011 at 01:21 pm | #
Dear Mr. Zast:
“In the two most recent Novembers through Januaries, the Eclipse Awards has enhanced the prospect of beguiling verbal intercourse among horse racing’s audiences to the same extent that Cialis has introduced bathtub soaking as a form of sex for jaded spouses.”
Cood you pleese xplane what this meens, i is not so good wit the big words you yuse, but i did get arowsed sum.
TTT