Sportsfrog.com

By the time you read this, Danica Patrick may not be alive, for it’s entirely possible that she’s currently drowning in a pool of the media’s slobber.

Late this week, Danica said that it wasn’t her mission to be the big story at Daytona, and she’s done nothing to bring attention to herself other than racing the car. You know… the same thing that 42 other drivers did Saturday.

Yet, that statement was met with derision by many media members. It’s obvious that two camps have broken in media circles: those obsessed with Danica’s every move, and those angered by that obsession.

(side note: Kroger Floral was giving media members roses on Thursday. A media member jokingly gave his rose to Danica to signify the media’s obsession with her. Those in the “angered” camp were furious with said media member, lambasting him on twitter. Even to the point of calling him unprofessional. Those two camps have shown the public what’s bad about NASCAR media coverage this week)

ESPN’s VP in charge of race telecasts said that he was impressed with Speed’s ARCA coverage of the race that Danica was in last week and wanted to model ESPN’s coverage of today’s race like Speed’s. (For those that didn’t see the Speed coverage, you could see DW’s spittle flying from the press box down onto the GoDaddy car. And, by the way, the ARCA race got better ratings than Pens-Caps, NCAA Basketball on CBS, golf on NBC and the NBA on ABC)

And man, was ESPN’s coverage Danica-centered. The ticker, which displays the positions of everyone in the field, simply wasn’t enough at times. So therefore, Danica got her own graphic below the ticker.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Danica and her people are the best in motorsports at using the media to their advantage. However, that power has its drawbacks, and Daytona Speedweeks was a perfect example. The media doesn’t have an off switch, especially when it comes to attractive females driving cars.