Ultimately, it is our capitalistic bent that is the mother of America’s ever-churning hype machine.
It — whatever it may be — is always bigger, better or new and improved. It is just what you need, just when you need it most.
Unfortunately, very few things live up to the hype. Today, we call it marketing, probably because marketer sounds much a little less carnival-inspired than hyper. A hyper is a carney with rows of the greatest prizes there for the taking.
A marketer wears a tie.
That brings me to Saturday-night racing at Bowman Gray Stadium, where no one wears a tie, but the racing lives up to the hype that proclaims Bowman Gray a NASCAR-sanctioned legend.

The Grand Canyon surpasses any hype any marketer could possibly come up with. Wings at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo are as good as the chili dogs from The Varsity in Atlanta. The start of the Kentucky Derby is nearly as cool as the start of the Indy 500. Everybody should hear the Texas Girls Choir sing “Deep in the Heart of Texas” at least once.

I have been lucky enough over the years to travel a vast portion of the U.S., quite often to cover sporting events, and I enjoy seeing more than stadiums and arenas, so I’ve ventured out to see some of America’s iconic treasures. My best friend and I drove Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica in a Ford Thunderbird several years ago.
Some things lived up to the hype.
For instance, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. I could spend days there. The Grand Canyon surpasses any hype any marketer could possibly come up with. Wings at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo are as good as the chili dogs from The Varsity in Atlanta. The start of the Kentucky Derby is nearly as cool as the start of the Indy 500. Everybody should hear the Texas Girls Choir sing “Deep in the Heart of Texas” at least once.
Then, there are other creations of the American hype machine that don’t quite live up to the billing.
When I went to see the Liberty Bell while covering an NBA playoff series in Philadelphia, I arrived at Independence Hall, expecting to see it there. Turns out, the bell is housed in a small glass building just off the square that looks like what I imagine Frank Lloyd Wright’s garage to be.
The park ranger giving the tour then proceeds to lay it out — this is a bell, but not necessarily THE bell. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Either way, the abolitionists in the early 1800s were looking for a symbol.
It’s hard to say how they chose the Liberty Bell (or its imposter), but my guess is the bell had a good press agent, probably some guy named Manny who split time between Philly and the Jersey shore.
“Symbol? Have I got the bell for you. One bell, one crack in the name of freedom.”
As icons go, it was disappointing.
All of that brings me back to Bowman Gray Stadium and Saturday-night racing, which lives up to its marketing slogan that has been 60 years in the making. It started by hosting an array of hard-racing, hard-fighting characters under the NASCAR banner and continues six decades later as the heart of modified racing in the south.
The racing is still hard on the spandex-tight flat quarter-mile.
Patience is necessary to win and usually exhausted just before push comes to shove between drivers.
The show goes on every Saturday night during the summer in front of loyal fans, who can see every turn from practically any seat in the horseshoe-shaped stadium, which sits on the campus of Winston-Salem State University.
And there, it lives up to the hype where so many other self-proclaimed legends fail.