Trouble in Turn2

This week it’s time meet the ringleader behind Yahoo’s popular NASCAR blog From the Marbles, Jay Busbee.

How did you get into NASCAR blogging?
Through a very fortunate series of events. I had been running a blog focused on southern sports called Sports Gone South for about a year or so. I did a few NASCAR posts here and there—you can’t really do a sports website without them—and I was having some success, getting links from places like Sports Illustrated. Around this time, Yahoo! started putting some serious coin and effort into its blogs, and I decided I’d like a piece of that action. I kept pestering Jamie Mottram, Yahoo!’s blogs editor, for a gig. One week before this year’s Daytona, he offered me a tryout on the NASCAR site. I’d already scheduled a getaway weekend with my wife to South Beach in Miami during Daytona weekend, so I took the laptop along, bought my wife a five-hour trip to the spa, and blogged my ass off for the whole race. And so here we are.

How long have you been a NASCAR fan? I’ve been a fan ever since my mom’s relations in Richmond took me to the old Southside Speedway. I have no idea who I watched there, except that I do remember that they’d run these series of races, and somewhere along the line they’d allow amateurs onto the track to race one-on-one. I’m sure some of those guys went on to have some success in racing, but I distinctly remember one who surely didn’t…because he put on his left-turn signal entering Turn 3.

Anyway, back to the question…I’ve always been more of a stick-and-ball guy. I knew who everybody in NASCAR was, what their teams were, what the big stories were, but it was a Sunday-to-Sunday kind of fandom, not the 24/7 kind that I’m into now. Make no mistake, I’ve got a fever…and the only cure is more NASCAR.

What do you enjoy about your blog and the NASCAR blogging community?
I enjoy the fact that the NASCAR blogosphere is still rather uncharted territory. We’ve got your site, mine, three or four other major ones, and that’s about it. Compare that to football, baseball or basketball, where there are literally hundreds of blogs fighting for eyeballs. We’ve got a lot of opportunity to stake out our own turf. Me, I’m taking the smartass-idiot-in-the-back-of-the-class territory.

I love the fact that there’s no shortage of storylines to write about, and no shortage of ways to explore the major storylines of the season. In its purest form, NASCAR is one large race with 35 pit stops, and that’s the kind of long view I’m taking. Ideally, when you get to the end of the 2008 season, you’ll be able to look back at what we’ve done at the Marbles and see that we’ve riffed on every major event of the year, and had fun doing it.

And yeah, I do get a little pleasure out of tweaking some of the NASCAR sacred cows. More than once, I’ve compared Kyle to the Intimidator knowing full well that #3 Nation will go completely insane. What I want everyone to get is that it’s entirely possible to respect the hell out of these guys while still laughing about what they do.

Is there anything you don’t enjoy about blogging, or the NASCAR online community? Not that it’s a problem, but it is something to be aware of—in blogging, there’s no room to lay back on your laurels. You stick the landing on a funny or insightful post, and the next day it’s gone, and your readers are saying, what have you done for me lately, blog monkey? There’s a real risk of burnout, so you’ve got to be careful to compartmentalize your blog work—don’t work on your blog from 7am to midnight, or whatever. If you don’t keep your love of your subject fresh, it’ll show through in your work. Readers can tell when you’re phoning in a post.

Also, as everyone has seen, there are a fair share of absolute idiots who have figured out how to comment on your posts. I don’t care if you don’t like my favorite driver, I don’t care if you hate everything that I write. Matter of fact, I love it when folks like that come to the site and can put up a good fight. But all it takes is one racist/sexist/homophobic moron to confirm every pathetic stereotype about NASCAR. That’s what drives me insane. That, and the very simplistic, with-us-or-against-us mindset that some fans bring to the table. I wrote a post a couple weeks back saying something to the effect that Kyle Busch’s checkers-or-wreckers style is exactly what NASCAR needs right now, and more than one commenter said, “If he killed somebody, would you be saying how wonderful he is then?” Of course not, you fool. See some shades of gray in the world.

It seems like sometimes your readers miss the satire in your posts. Is it hard to convey humor through writing? The hardest thing about humor is that what one person finds funny, another finds stupid or dull or asinine. One of my favorite regular bits is “Pit Chatter,” where I create little scripts and backstories for what’s “really” going on between the drivers. It’s goofy and ridiculous—Kyle Busch communicates only through text messages, Junior weaves his sponsors into every sentence he speaks—and the first couple times I did it, some people really didn’t get that it was a joke. I got called dishonorable, which I didn’t understand, and told that I should write for Cartoon Network, which I took as a compliment. I love those dudes.

I think that a lot of my readers didn’t quite know what to expect when I came on board. My first major post compared NASCAR drivers to NFL players (the Super Bowl had just concluded). And while some folks got the joke or understood that it was just a kind of lighthearted cross-sport post, others got horribly offended that I would dare demean their beloved drivers by comparing them with lowly football players.

There’s a certain segment that’s never going to get what I’m trying to do—have fun with the sport and its participants, giving everyone a place to air their thoughts on their favorite (and least favorite) drivers. And that’s fine. But there are more that are understanding what an amazing opportunity blogs offer all of us to talk NASCAR. It really is a sports bar with a seating capacity in the millions. No beer or hot wings, unfortunately, although we are working on that.

How much time per day do you spend blogging? Probably six hours a day, plus trolling all the NASCAR sites, listening to the big podcasts, watching some TiVo’ed races and programming. There are worse ways to make a living.

Is there one thing that was key to your blog’s success?

Two things, actually. One is the association with Yahoo! Itself. It’s the Number One sports site on the web, so when they link to one of my posts, I get the population of a decent-sized city coming to the site—which is nice. But my bosses have always stressed that we shouldn’t just lay back and wait for those spikes, that we should try to create a community of our own. And I think that community will be the true key to the blog’s success.

The site is getting to the point where it’s rolling along just fine even when I’m not there. Every race, we run an open thread called “Running Wide Open,” where people can vent about what’s going on during the race. And when I look at all the comments and conversations getting going on those posts, I’m like a proud papa watching his kid take his first steps.

And then some idiot comes in and goes “NASCAR’s stoopid! It’s nothing but rednecks turning left!” and I’m like the disgusted papa who has to clean up an overflowing diaper.

Do you have a favorite driver?

Tony Stewart. I love the guy’s attitude, his skill behind the wheel, and the fact that you never quite know what the hell he’s going to say next. I do a lot of journalistic sportswriting outside of the blog, and I can count on one hand the number of reliably good interview subjects I’ve met—guys like Charles Barkley and Chipper Jones, who never take a question off. I haven’t yet had the pleasure of interviewing Smoke, but I can’t imagine he won’t be on that list.

Which races do you attend during the season?

Both Atlanta races; I live in Atlanta so that’s easy enough. I’m also hoping to get to more this season and in the future—I’d love to do a Marbles on-the-ground report from Daytona next year.

What is your favorite track?
Talladega, first among the superspeedways. Like everybody else, I like short track and road racing, but there’s something about the big dogs that makes them can’t-miss events for me.

Name something cool that has come as a result of your blog.

The coolest thing hasn’t yet come to pass, but hopefully will before too much longer. I don’t want to jinx it by saying anything, but a couple of somebodies who I’ve written about several times on the site are interested in coming on board and having their say.

For now, though, the very cool thing is getting to meet a whole community of fun, knowledgeable, laid-back but very dedicated NASCAR fans. There’s momentum building now; we’ve got inside jokes and regular features up and running. Plus, I’ve managed to convert a couple of my stick-and-ball pals to at least taking a vague interest in NASCAR, which I count as a victory.

Do you have any strange or funny stories about your blog (funny or outrageous comments or emails from people, etc.)?
Like most other bloggers, I’ve had a few people assume that I have a lot more access than I do—“You tell Junior to shut up until he wins a race,” “Can you give Tony Stewart my email?”, stuff like that. I also love the conspiracy theories—NASCAR, Toyota and the Illuminati are joining forces to put Obama in office, or whatever.

One of the funniest things to me is how many people regularly swear off NASCAR because of whatever perceived injustice has been done to them—bringing in Toyota/women drivers/restrictor plates/commercials/et cetera. If all these people actually did quit the sport, NASCAR would be down to, like, ten fans.

What is something your readers wouldn’t otherwise know about you or your blog?
In addition to the NASCAR work, I write comic books. Really. And I’m one of the nation’s foremost experts on the solid waste industry [ seriously]. I’ve done a lot of writing outside NASCAR, some of it in areas far afield from NASCAR. But I’ve NEVER had more fun writing than blogging.

That, and I’m really Kyle Busch. That’s why I’ve been planting pro-Kyle propaganda all along. See, conspiracy theorists? We really are out to get you!