Nascar Race Today

From the National Rifle Association to Duck Commander as the title sponsor of its Sprint Cup race, Texas Motor Speedway knows how to attract attention and create a stir with a sponsor.

The Duck Commander 500 Sunday is sponsored by the company owned by the famous Robertson family, the stars of A&E's Duck Dynasty. But the Duck Commander sponsorship shouldn't be compared to the NRA, which sponsors the NRA 500 last year, when thinking about what's appropriate and what's not.

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The NRA's political lobbying arm makes it a political organization in the minds of many. While it has a non-political side, its role and activism in the gun-control debate makes it a polarizing organization.

The NRA sponsorship of the Texas race last year created a perception that NASCAR endorsed the NRA. Regardless of one's political views, a sports league shouldn't be perceived as endorsing a political organization. When congressmen are asking for NASCAR to step in and strip the track of the sponsorship and fans are railing on Twitter saying they won't watch, there is a problem.

Although NASCAR always had the right to stop a race sponsorship, there was no formal process until this year. In reaction to the NRA deal, NASCAR added to its sanction agreements with tracks that all tracks must submit the race sponsors for NASCAR approval.

That's the right thing to do, require tracks to submit for approval its race sponsors just as teams need approval for paint schemes. All of those sponsorships reflect on the league itself.

But NASCAR needs to be careful in what it chooses to prohibit.

NASCAR approved the Duck Commander 500, and that also was the right decision.

Duck Commander is the product that is sold by the Robertson family. The family patriarch, Phil Robertson, is an outspoken man of faith whose anti-gay comments created an uproar in December.

Those comments earned him a brief suspension from the A&E show, which recently had its worst ratings for its season finale in four years.

Just because a company sponsors a race doesn't mean that NASCAR and its teams and tracks agree with the views of the company owner. That's a big difference than having an organization such as the NRA, whose views are the basis of the organization, sponsoring a race.

It could be argued that the Robertson family uses its Duck Commander line to help fund its morality campaigns. But that still doesn't make it something NASCAR should prohibit.

NASCAR can't be in the business of investigating what company owners do with the money earned from their products, and NASCAR can't concern itself with the political agenda of the owners of companies whose products sponsor races.

If it did, would Chik-Fil-A not be allowed to sponsor a race because of the owner's view on gay marriage, which was part of a national debate a couple of years ago? The same with Hobby Lobby for its polarizing stance and leadership in the debate on whether it should have a choice on whether to offer birth control as part of its health-care package? Or Coca-Cola for selling what some people would consider an unhealthy product?

And let's not even get started on trying to figure out which drug companies are behind the various campaigns to diagnose and treat diseases, campaigns that seem to be increasingly using NASCAR races to promote their projects.

NASCAR needs to prohibit only sponsorships that are overtly political or in incredibly bad taste. The NRA sponsorship actually played well with many in the NASCAR fan base (Richard Childress is a board member), but that was a rare sponsorship that fueled a political fire.

A race sponsorship is a business decision. As long as those sponsorships deal with businesses, they all should be allowed. The Duck Commander 500 fits into that category.