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Fabrizio column: Unlikely Analyst Daugherty Has Insight

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Tony Fabrizio/The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 3, 2007

FORT WORTH, Texas - If you follow NASCAR on television, there's no doubt you've heard this or even thought it.

Brad Daugherty the fraud. Brad Daugherty the beneficiary.

Daugherty is a former NBA player, a very good one, and an African-American. The former makes him seem unqualified, and the latter out of place as an expert analyst on two ESPN racing shows, "NASCAR Now" and the pre-race "NASCAR Countdown."

Surely this is the product of a network pushing diversity ahead of substance.

Spend 45 minutes with Daugherty, as I did Friday in the ESPN compound set up outside Texas Motor Speedway, and you would have a different opinion.

Daugherty, 42, isn't a former driver or crew chief - the usual prerequisite for expert analyst status - but he is no fraud. He is a lifelong racing fan who has built race cars, worked on them, owned them in the Busch and Craftsman Truck Series and practically oozes a passion for the sport.

"I love everything that goes with this sport - the sounds, the sights, the smells, the strategy, the violence," Daugherty said inside a trailer too short for his 7-foot frame. "I've been to umpteen thousand races all over this country, and when these things fire up, I still get goose bumps."

Rich Feinberg, ESPN's vice president for motorsports, makes no apology for promoting diversity. He pulls a card out of his pocket that names embracing diversity as a company value.

But he concedes there was some resistance from viewers on Daugherty's hiring as a NASCAR expert.

"As time has gone on, he has become more and more accepted, because they have focused less on why he's there and more on what he's saying," Feinberg said.

Daugherty grew up in Black Mountain, N.C., in the Blue Ridge Mountain foothills near Asheville, an area with a rich heritage for racing.

His father and uncle built and raced hot rods, though not on a sanctioned racetrack.

"We had an old half-mile stretch of road on the side of the mountain near where we lived, and everybody would come on Sunday evenings and drag race," Daugherty said. "It was awesome. It was terrifying, because usually there were a few beverages being served and somebody would end up in a wad, but it was awesome."

Hero's Number

Daugherty's best-known connection is that he wore Richard Petty's No. 43 - starting in high school and throughout an eight-year career with the Cleveland Cavaliers in which he made the All-Star team five times and left as the Cavs' all-time leading scorer and rebounder.

He would have worn No. 43 in college at North Carolina, but another incoming freshman had also worn the number in high school. Coach Dean Smith flipped a coin, and Daugherty lost, so he wore No. 42.

Daugherty met Petty twice as a youth, and the second time - at Daytona in the early 1970s - won his allegiance for life.

"It left an indelible impression on me that he would take the time on two different occasions to talk to this little kid - and I obviously stood out as an African-American kid at that point at a couple of Southeastern tracks," Daugherty said. "I said that day that if I ever became famous, I was going to treat people the way he treated me."

As a teenager, Daugherty befriended Robert Pressley, the son of successful short-track racer Bob Pressley. The two eventually went racing together, with Daugherty buying the equipment and running the team and Daugherty winning numerous races and a Winston Racing Series mid-Atlantic championship.

Mark In NASCAR

Then there was the sweltering night at Orange County Speedway in Rougemont, N.C., where Pressley made his third Busch Series start in a Daugherty-owned car.

Pressley, a talented but rough driver, won a side-by-side battle with Jimmy Spencer to put himself in contention, and took out both Tommy Houston and Tommy Ellis to win the race.

"I go running out on the racetrack, and I wasn't thinking, but everybody was mad at Robert and wanted to kill him," Daugherty says with a hearty laugh. "He gets out of the race car and jumps into my arms. We're standing 15 feet past the start-finish line, and - I'll lever forget this as long as I live - Tommy Ellis is making a beeline straight for me.

"So I'm standing there looking at him, and he gets about 20 feet from me and stops. He's so mad he doesn't know what to do. So he says, 'Y'all, that was a dirty race! That was a dirty race, Brad Daugherty! I'm going to throw a snake on you!' He's going to throw a snake on me."

Daugherty met his wife, Heidi, at a Friendly's Restaurant in Ormond Beach before a race at Volusia County Speedway. She was the waitress, and he came in with axle grease on his face after changing a rear-end gear borrowed from another driver.

Feinberg says Daugherty is smart enough to know he has to "work hard to be good" as an analyst, and Daugherty has. Before working the broadcast booth for two Busch Series races this year, he made a point of talking to every driver and crew chief.

He's no expert in the traditional sense. But Brad Daugherty is no fraud.

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