In the aftermath of Ohio State's 26-20 upset of Michigan, a result that snatched the Big 10 football championship from the hands of Michigan's Wolverines and delivered it to the University of Illinois, Illinois coach Ron Turner sent a premium cigar and a "thank you" note to his OSU counterpart, Jim Tressel.

Even among rivals, that was the polite thing to do since OSU's victory assured the Fighting Illini of a berth in one of the four major BCS bowl games. As a result, Illinois figures to make $13 million-plus for its appearance in the Sugar Bowl. Michigan, on the other hand, will earn less than $2 million for playing in a second tier game.

I doubt that NHRA President Tom Compton is out scouring the malls of Southern California for a similarly appropriate gift for Mike Helton, his counterpart at NASCAR, but considering his recent good fortune, that might not be such a bad idea.

NHRA's new five-year sponsorship deal with POWERade, The Coca-Cola Company's answer to Gatorade, probably is worth close to $25 million and for that, drag racing's principal sanctioning body owes no less a debt to NASCAR than Illinois does to Michigan.

Oh, the trail might not be quite as well-defined, but it's still there.

When Helton and NASCAR opted to abandon their long-time television partners, TNN, ESPN, CBS and ABC, in favor of a new multi-million dollar alliance with Fox and NBC, who could have imagined the effect it would have on drag racing, often considered the poor stepchild of American motor racing?

With NASCAR out of the mix, the four jilted networks were forced to scramble for new properties to fill their vacant time slots. ESPN, hardest hit by the NASCAR defection, needed more than just "stuff." It needed a new marquee motorsports series on which to hang its banner.

Enter the NHRA, whose own TV package had fallen apart two years before with the ill- advised cancellation of NHRA Today, a popular weekly TV newsmagazine; with the evaporation of a phantom deal with the USA Network; and with an increasingly contentious relationship with Diamond P Sports, its production company.

Compton and his lieutenants inherited a lot of the problems, but before they began to fix them, they made them worse. It's kind of like the woman who, in anticipation of starting her diet on Monday, binges the entire weekend and gains more than 10 pounds. It makes her dietary task a little more difficult, but it sounds so much better to later tell friends that she's lost 30 pounds instead of just 20.

What's that got to do with POWERade, you say? I'm getting to that.

The bottom line is that NHRA's current TV package, a package that this season exceeded ESPN's wildest expectations, would not have been a possible if NASCAR had not broken and run from the network that first put it on the sports map.

By the same token, if NHRA had not had the TV data from the season just completed, data which clearly showed the sport to be second in preference among motor sports fans behind only NASCAR; if it had been forced to sell drag racing based on the 2000 TV package, it's unlikely that POWERade would have committed to the program announced last week at Downtown Disney in Southern California.

The irony of it all is that now that the NHRA is aligned with ESPN and POWERade, it likely will continue to see an increase in television viewership at the expense of NASCAR's Winston Cup Series, whose TV fan base eroded ever so slightly in 2001 despite the emotion of Dale Earnhardt's death and his son's emergence as a contender.

In POWERade, the NHRA finally has a partner with whom it can share marketing strategies which are not subject to the close scrutiny of the federal government. Whereas Winston had a troubled relationship with television due to constantly expanding government sanctions, ESPN and POWERade seems to be a perfect match.

So, whenever you're necking down a refreshing bottle of POWERade, maybe an InfraRed Freeze or a Jagged Ice, be sure you don't forget to acknowledge the stock car connection. NASCAR'S loss seems to have become our collective gain.

Dave Densmore, a paid columnist for DRO, also works for John Force.

Photo of Densmore by Jeff Burk

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