tool name
closeTom Sorensen | Bruton's still bluffing
TOM SORENSEN
The Charlotte Observer
Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007
Monday is scary. Most Mondays are scary, but this one is scarier than most.
Lowe's Motor Speedway has scheduled a news conference for Bruton Smith, and I never thought to ask where it will be held. I mean, I know we'll gather on the fifth floor of the Speedway Club. But I no longer know where the Speedway Club is.
See, I've been so caught up in football that I am halfway to Concord before I realize that Bruton might have moved the speedway and speedway club to Rowan Country -- I think I know which one Rowan is -- or Gaston Country or South Carolina.
I am never late when I'm working, and the news conference is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. and it's already 1:45. I pull off I-485 onto Highway 29, head north past Verizon Wireless Amphitheater and Baby Dolls, which appears to be a club, and cross my fingers as I drive up the hill and -- would you look at that?
The speedway is still here!
Bruton Smith, the billionaire chairman of Speedway Motorsports, had said he was 90 percent certain he would move his track. But he didn't.
Can you believe it?
Of course you can.
I ask Bruton if, now that he has everything he wants from Concord, we could achieve a little candor.
You were never going to move the track, were you?
"My intention was absolutely to move," Bruton says.
Well, I tried.
I think Bruton was as likely to move the speedway as the Carolina Panthers are to make the playoffs.
As a non-story goes, this was a good one.
Bruton decided to tack a drag strip onto the speedway but didn't get a permit and when Concord called him on it -- at the end of the runway there's practically a neighborhood -- Bruton snapped.
By 5 p.m. the day after Concord scolded him, Bruton had on his desk aerial photographs of Charlotte-area landmasses large enough to accommodate a speedway.
If you can't spend your billions on fun stuff such as aerial photographs certain to frighten Concord, which already has lost Pillowtex and Philip Morris USA, what's the point of being a billionaire?
Concord and Cabarrus County could not risk losing the speedway and all that it represents. So they gave Bruton the concessions and inducements he wanted.
If there are impressionable children reading this column, here's a tip. The more money you have, the more stuff people give you. Getting rich is tough. Staying rich is easy. The trick is to get rich. Sorry. I can't help you there. But if I were rich, I would stay rich, I'll tell you that right now.
The element of the story that has been left out is that the speedway needs Concord as badly as Concord needs the speedway. Racing is not a sport that sheds tradition lightly. And back in the days when Charlotte turned up its nose at racing -- you'd have to go all the way back to the 1990s -- Concord embraced it.
I love happy endings. Concord gets what it wants, Bruton gets what he wants and I get what I want.
As one of the few people who insisted, in two columns since Oct. 5, that Bruton would never leave, I get to be right. IN MY OPINION Tom Sorensen
