Thoughts on the Eagle/I-80 reconciliation

Without being any part of the proceedings and reading about it as soon as everyone else did, it appears that attorney and former track owner Craig Kelley helped mediate a deal between Eagle and I-80 over what was going to be a nasty conflict in scheduling.

My thoughts:

- Obviously, as you can see the April 10 date wasn't the only bone of contention. From what I was told outside of the discussions, there were some "retaliatory" moves before the mediation stemming back from conflicts in the past.

- Notice the statement about "give-and-take." THAT is my definition of "working together," not offering specials to guys already coming or doing things that are more investments than compromises. 

- For all the arguments about who got the schedule first, one forgets that Eagle dropped its huge Labor Day Shootout/free ticket special right on I-80's season points finale last year. And they didn't announce it until mid season. You can see that was a big issue as it was mentioned by name. On the other end, a pre-Eagle Nationals ASCS race was scheduled the night before at I-80 until Eagle and Tony Bruce raised objections.

- It's nice to see that after 2010, both are going to hammer out their plans in concert with each other. Calling "shotgun!" when it comes to scheduling is not the answer, and in my eyes is just as (in)valid as the high school, six-people-in-a-four-person-car version. Simply put, Eagle may still be the 800-lb gorilla in the room when it comes to fan count overall, but I-80 and others are working to make moves of their own. As they say, "it's business."

- The big winners in this are the fans in general, and sprint fans in particular. Fact is, that before the uhh...settlement, neither track was going to be hurting for sprints. Of late, ASCS races are generally only 10-15% Eagle cars, and Eagle would have its own weekly contingent. The fans would've been divided between the familiarity of their "home track" and the variety, and recently the competitiveness of the ASCS show.

- In the end, it was nice of Mr. Kelley to step up and use his positive ties with both places to work for the greater good. Props to him and props to Eagle and I-80 management for their work in making it better for the fans.