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The title of this column could be "Career Suicide 101" because I've become somewhat of an authority on the subject.
For 32 of my first 50 years I had the good fortune to be a reporter/columnist at The Indianapolis Star, which was somewhat of a miracle since I'd flunked out of that academic pillar at Ball State.
I covered my first Indy 500 for The Star in 1969 and by 1975 I was racing midgets in USAC and writing a racing column 52 weeks a year (mostly on USAC). By 1977, I'd become the lead racing writer for the only newspaper in the country that truly cared about motorsports.
From '77 until 2000, my May ritual was to write the daily lead, a column every other day and contribute to our Pit Pass notebook. When you threw in the Bob & Tom radio show every morning (I worked with the irreverent Jay Baker on Dick's Picks from Gasoline Alley) and the trackside TV show I did every night, it was a long but fun day that I loved. And it got even better the Thursday before the race when I emceed The Last Row Party (an event that roasted the 31st, 32nd and 33rd starters).
All this background is necessary to illustrate what happened in 1996.
When Tony George divided open wheel racing with the formation of the Indy Racing League, changed the qualifying procedure (you surely remember 25/8) at Indy and replaced Andretti, Fittipaldi, Rahal, Sullivan and Unser with Bronco Brad Murphey and Racin' Gardner, I went on the attack. In print, on local television and on my nightly radio show on WIBC, I railed against the IMS prez almost daily and he explored pulling my credential but was wisely talked out of it.
Now I still covered Indy like always, writing the news and accomplishments of the day along with feel-good columns on Tony Stewart and Mark Dismore, but continued to pound TGeorge. I treated the competitors like any other May because they put on the show and it wasn't their fault Indy had been forever damaged.
Of course the interesting thing was the rest of my local media brethren. They all knew this wasn't the real Indy 500 but nary a disparaging word came out of their mouths. Just all that happy talk and gushing about Joe Gosek and those big crowds watching qualifying. It was see-no-evil on TV and hear-no-evil on radio for a solid month and I was the ONLY voice speaking out on the obvious emasculation of May.
That summer I got gassed from my five-night-a-week radio gig at WIBC because management claimed the "ratings" were disappointing from 7-10 p.m. on AM radio. Yeah right. I was told that IMS officials told owner Jeff Smulyan that WIBC could become the official station of IMS but not until they got rid of me.
The Star had tried to become business partners with IMS since the mid-90s but a prominent member of the marketing staff was told "never" as long as that $#&*%@ Miller was still writing for the paper. In January of 2001, Gannett showed me the door because, drum roll please, I'd tainted the paper by helping Kenny Brack start his website, supposedly broke a racing story on CART's website, borrowed money from Tom Sneva (after he quit driving) and used vulgar language in some emails (really, me?).
A week after I was escorted out of the building, The Star and IMS became partners. What a coincidence.
Channel 13, the local NBC affiliate that I'd worked for since '95, kept me through 2001 before becoming "news gathering partners" with The Star, who according to management at that time, demanded I get the boot and, naturally, I did in 2002.
Oh yeah, I wasn't allowed on Bob & Tom anymore either because, I assume, I'd lambasted Tony once when those two radio jocks had suggested the "buzz" had returned to the Speedway.
But let's fast forward to 2007. The Indy media, inundated with what I would call suck-ups, who either want to keep their pace car, free Indy tickets or jobs with the IMS network so they've never uttered a discouraging word about May during all these years despite the fact they privately acknowledge it's lost its crowd, luster and pedigree.
And many of my old racing "friends" who turned on me and called me a Commie Bastard for criticizing Tony have since admitted the obvious, Indy has been reduced to a one-day event and is never coming back like it was in 1995.
Owners, mechanics and drivers who praised Tony and cursed me in the late '90s now take his name in vain because they've all been left behind as the IRL morphed into "CART Lite", to quote A.J. Foyt.
I worked for ESPN from 2001-2004 before it stopped covering motorsports and went to work for SPEED while continuing to freelance for Autosport and Champ Car's website. How can he be objective on open wheel racing
When either series did something stupid and needed to be reminded, I wrote about it on SPEEDtv.com and talked about it on SPEED Report or Wind Tunnel. Even though Champ Car agreed to let me be semi-critical a few times about schedules, venues and decisions, I'm sure SPEED would have preferred if I only wrote for them.
Well, now I'm all theirs.
After last Sunday's critique of Champ Car's state (which by the way was mild compared to some of the commentaries I've written about TGeorge over the years) on SPEEDtv.com, I was informed my services were no longer required on Champ Car's web site. (For the record, I'd predicted my dismissal to a couple of friends on Sunday night).
So let's recap. For reporting the demise of the Indy 500, I lost four jobs, lots of money, several friendships and to this day I'm persona non grata on every Indy radio and TV station except the ABC affiliate during May. Oh, and the Indy Star acts like I never existed on their pages for five decades.
For pointing out that Champ Car has a shortage of common sense, cars, leadership and good judgment on this web site, I lost a nice supplementary income.
Of course this is the big difference between myself and intelligent life. Obviously, I understood the potential consequences of my actions in 1996 and again this past weekend. Keep my mouth shut, toe the party line and collect my checks -- facts and reality be damned.
But I can't play that game of looking the other way when Champ Car tries to fire Tony Cotman or lying about how much drama there is on Bump Day at Indy nowadays.
My problem is that open wheel racing is my family, my job and my passion. Watching it be destroyed is maddening and frustrating. Nobody in this country has written more positive stories about Indy, Indy cars and open wheel than me. And nobody has been as critical. A healthy faction of CART owners hated me in the late '80s and early '90s and IRL brain trust has felt that way most of the past 11 years. Now they both loathe me and that's perfect, I'm must be doing my job.
Naturally, I understand a lot of people in my business maybe can't always say what they feel because they've got families to feed and can't afford to lose their job.
Telling the truth in the media is usually risk vs. reward. You risk losing money, friends and stability for taking a stand while the reward is the conviction of your reporting.
Auto racing has always been driven by bitching, cheating, lying and stealing other's people's drivers and sponsors -- it's the nature of the beast. Indy-car racing has always, in my humble opinion, been mismanaged regardless of the call letters. NASCAR has always written its rule book in pencil. USAC has always been stuck in the 1950s. The AMA has plenty of its own issues, just ask any team owner or rider. Sure there are some great people and stories in motorsports and telling them is the most enjoyable part of our jobs.
But it's a cut-throat business that demands more honest analysis and usually settles for saccharine shows on TV complete with cheerleading or insulting features about some sappy team owner's melodramatic pain over the cheating on his team.
Thankfully, there are old rippers like Ben Blake, Ed Hinton, Monte Dutton, Gordon Kirby and Brock Yates who are never afraid to hold people's feet to the fire. Thankfully, SPEED provides me a national forum and doesn't tell me what to say or write.
In the movie A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson's character said: "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth."
And the truth is, not many racing people can.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SpeedTV.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel
Robin Miller covers open wheel racing for SPEEDtv.com, SPEED Report and WIND TUNNEL. A lifelong resident of Indianapolis, an 18-year-old Miller stooged for his hero Jim Hurtubise at the Indianapolis 500 in 1968 and began covering motorsports for The Indianapolis Star in 1969. Besides working on Indy pit crews from 1968-78, Miller also competed on the USAC midget circuit from 1975-83. During the past 35 years he's also been a contributor for Autoweek, Autosport, Car & Driver, ESPN The Magazine and several publications that folded and still owe him money. He is single, a degenerate gambler and despises the NASCAR phrase, "We had a Top 20 car today."
Robin Miller is not affiliated with RACER magazine and his views should not be considered representative of RACER or of Haymarket Worldwide Inc.
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