There is a place in Winston-Salem, a building, where NASCAR’s history was born. A place not where the greats of NASCAR walked but a place their fathers did. A place where Lee Petty and a young Richard Petty cleaned up after a Saturday night race, a place where Ralph Earnhardt hung his fire suit, a place where Richard Childress raced before owning Dale Earnhardt’s car, a place that witnessed my great uncle’s heart attack behind the wheel of a modified car. This place now is where Travis Teague has his office.
The first race at Bowman Grey Stadium was in 1949. The original clubhouse has stood since anyone can remember. The clubhouse was just that: a house. As a little kid I thought that a family lived there. I was always jealous of that family because they had the best view of the race. The new clubhouse is part of the Winston-Salem Sports and Entertainment Complex and is home of the Winston-Salem State University Rams football team.
“I’m going to do the small things right,” says Travis Teague the first day of class, “I don’t have to wear tie, but I do because I’m supposed to.” He is the man in charge of the Winston-Salem State University Motorsports Management Program, the only one of its kind in the country. Other schools offer a very similar curriculum but no other offers a bachelors of science degree in motorsports management; many only offer it as a concentration of sports management or business management. The program is a how-to course in the fastest growing industry in the nation, which includes more than just NASCAR — anything from AMA motorcycle racing to speedboat
Teague
has a Southern drawl in his voice and moves slowly, like any
respectable Southern man does. During class he mentions his military
time and with that it reminds you of why he looks familiar. He looks
like a drill sergeant, although he’s far more kindhearted. It’s the
first day of the fall semester and the first day of the motorsports
management program.
“I want you to get excited about what we
are doing here. Let’s make a big deal of this,” Teague tries his best
to encourage his class. In May of ’07 the major was approved by the UNC
administration system, but this is the first semester for entering
freshman. Teague believes he is making history.
There are no textbooks required for the class but several magazines on the reading list: NASCAR Scene and National Speed Sport News. As homework every Sunday
racing
is considered a motorsport. In North Carolina alone there are 25,000
jobs available in the motorsports industry, with salaries of $61,000
plus. Of the 20 most watched sporting events in the US last year, 17 of
them were motorsports.
Soon the motorsports management program
will have a wing of the Bowman Grey Club House. Teague explains that
the sport is like footbal. There used to be only a few coaches on a
football team, but now there are over a dozen, each with his own
specific task and specialty. These days there are coaches for offensive
linemen, defensive linemen, receivers and quarterbacks. Motorsports is
increasing in its specificity as well, requiring a more students must
watch the NASCAR Sprint Cup race and answer five marketing questions
related to what they learned from watching the race. This falls under
experiential learning, which is 35 percent of their grade. Also every
student in the program must go through a motorsports practicum,
motorsports seminar and an internship in motorsports.
The
first student to go through an internship was Darrell Southern, a
Winston-Salem native and a sports management major. “I knew I wanted to
work in the sports industry, I just didn’t know what my niche was,”
Southern says. “It only took a few events to say, ‘Hey, this is the
industry I want to work in.’” When Teague began the program he looked
for help from students in other majors because at the time only a
handful of students were motorsports management majors. They went to
several concentrated education.
“In my day we did not have
these type of specifics,” says Teague, which is why he was happy WSSU
chose to make this a stand-alone major and not a concentration. The
student must be able to sell a driver, an event, a team or a sport.
“You are going to be selling a race, not a product — they are not the
same,” Teague emphasizes. “It is all so intangible, a motorsport
management major must try to make the real emphasis on a real-life
experience. It’s a memory of a race, not a product. And how do you sell
that to someone?” different events and set up tables and race cars to
advertise for the program. At one event, the Good Guys car show at
Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Southern met Human Relations Director Julie at
Motorsports Authentics. She encouraged him to apply for their
internship. He left the event with her contact information and when it
came time for him to find an internship it took just a quick phone
call. “They know our program is successful, it was a matter of a few
minutes. I give Dr. Teague and Dr. Hand a lot of praises because they
are working very hard to set up opportunities for their students to be
successful,” says Southern, “Internships are becoming as competitive as
jobs, so to have an internship so easily was amazing.”
He also
enjoys the internship because of the interaction with the people in the
industry. Motorsports Authentics makes die-cast cars and apparel for
NASCAR
Burton
Smith, the new owner and operator of Lowe’s Motor Speedway in
Charlotte, recently received $80 million from the local government to
help improve the area around the new Z-max Dragway that opened this
past weekend; it cost $23 million to put Budweiser on Kasey Kahn’s race
car in the NSACAR Sprint series, and for every dollar spent on
sponsorship there are three spent on advertising. Want to get involved
in an Indy-car team? It’s $47 million to get into the door. It has
become a little more complicated since the early years of motorsports.
“It’s bigger than tires going around and guys turning left,” says Teaque.
Travis Teague, coordinator of the motorsports management program, on the first day of class at WSSU.
