Read the opposing arguments from Sports Geek and Bleacher Fan.
I hope all you fathers out there had a wonderful Father’s Day! I’m pretty sure Sports Geek and Bleacher Fan did! In honor of Father’s Day, The Sports Debates is going to do a debate fathers in sports. There’s certainly a wide range of angles, and there’s some good father-son combinations that we have left off our list of three arguments. My argument is going to tackle a famous family in NASCAR. I very easily could have chosen the Petty family and focused on Richard Petty, also known as The King. But instead, I believe the Earnhardt family deserves my focus.
Obviously, Dale Earnhardt is a name familiar to almost all sports fans. Following in the footsteps of his father, Ralph, who raced in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Dale Earnhardt, Sr. would go on to set numerous NASCAR records in his lifetime. He was a polarizing figure as he had both his fans and his haters. But it’s hard to argue his impact in NASCAR, both during his life and after his tragic death. He won 76 races all time while in the Winston Cup Series (now the Sprint Cup Series) and seven series championships, which is currently tied with Petty for most all time. He’s actually the guy who made me a fan of the sport. I was a late bloomer to NASCAR, which is odd since I am from the South. But I became enamored with the driver of the black GM Goodwrench number three around the time Dale Sr. won his one and only Daytona 500 in 1998. Unfortunately, The Intimidator died in a tragic accident at the 2001 Daytona 500 (the driver who won the race, Michael Waltrip, was ironically driving for Dale Earnhardt, Inc.). His death changed the course of the sport, and was the impetus for producing safer devices for drivers, cars and tracks.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. hasn’t had the same amount of success on the track as his father, but he’s still arguably the most popular driver in NASCAR, and perhaps in NASCAR history. He has won only 18 career races in the Sprint Cup Series. Other than winning the Daytona 500 in 2004, three years after the death of his father, Junior’s crowning achievement thus far was winning the Pepsi 400 in Daytona in July of 2001. It was the first race at Daytona since Dale Sr.’s death. It was truly an emotional moment for those in attendance, and for NASCAR fans watching across the country. I have friends who were there at Daytona International Speedway that night. They told me that there were people sobbing, and that the 150,000 fans in attendance didn’t want to leave.
Junior is still trying to build on the Earnhardt name. He’s yet to win his first series championship, and with the exception of a couple of years, he really hasn’t been a serious threat to do so. But combined with the tremendous success of his father, the Earnhardt’s truly are the strongest father-son combination in sports.
