The 5 W's, Eagle Raceway and Chris Alcorn

In the limited amount of Journalism classes I took, the first thing I learned about article writing is the 5-W's: Who, What, When, Where and Why. No story is complete without them.

So let me begin with the Chris Alcorn conspiracy

Who: Chris Alcorn and Eagle Raceway

What: Showing favoritism by letting him drive rough and giving him spots on yellow flags

When: Every night he wins - four times so far

Where: Uh, Eagle Raceway?

Why: hmmm....

Go ahead and think about it, I'll wait.....

Yeah, I can't figure it out either.

What does a racetrack have to gain by favoring a competitor? Does the track benefit to have one guy win 2/3 of the races? What good does that do in this era of multiple tracks and back-gate promoting to run off competitors with favoritism?

Is Chris Alcorn paying off Roger Hadan so that he wins another track championship? Is the money Chris pays Roger in this scenario enough to make up for the lost back gate revenue and bad feelings in the stands?

Does Chris have secret information on Roger he's blackmailing him with? Did Roger actually put magnets in the bottom of the track disguised as sheepsfoot prints so Chris could run the bottom when nobody else could Saturday night?

There's no family connection, no sponsor connection, and Chris seems to be a pretty stoic, even-keeled guy. Comes to the track, races, and leaves.

Again, the one question all these people fail to answer is WHY? Let me know and I'll buy you a new tinfoil hat.

We can talk about missed calls, questionable issues, but this still is at worst incompetence, and at best a case of wrong place, wrong time. Yes, there can be consistency issues, I've seen them.

But what we're dealing with is an accusation of deliberately fixing races.

It's the ultimate slap in the face to the sport. It's another level - crossing that line more than any other sideshow or bus-race exhibition at the track. We're accusing someone of totally eliminating the competition aspect – the core of racing.

I remember when working at Eagle getting emails from people saying we showed favoritism to Mike Meyer, John Schwartz, Rodney Droud, Rick Ideus (!), etc., etc.

My favorite was in 2005 when we got an email going on about how we are showing so much favoritism to Meyer because he's got his car on display (Mike volunteered) and he's winning races.

The week after the Modified Invitational with the World of Outlaws in the Summer of 2005 when Dave Trauernicht nipped Meyer at the line by 12-thousandths of a second, we received an email from a different address but the same gramatically-shaky, but "fonetikally-sownd" individual about how we favored Trauernicht and always favored the Beatrice cars.

With all the grief officials take at the track, why would they want deliberately-induced situations adding fuel to that fire? I know several of the Eagle officials and I consider many of them to be my friends. I've been on that end too.

They (and any other track officials) got enough troubles to deal with on a race night much less trying to pull of a grand scheme to set up a championship for...an IMCA Modified weekly show?!?

That's a lot of work, a lot of scheming on so many levels and a lot of risk for what could never be a big enough payoff.

Besides, who could pull it off with all the eagle-eyed observers and their internet connections?