The Belmont Stakes is this weekend with Big Brown looking to make some horse history.  It’s compelling but it’s definitely not the same as watching history unfold in another sport, you know a sport that doesn’t have a tiny human thrashing a ‘roided up beast around a track.  But because there is that history and tradition, there’s interest.  I would say the interest is and has been waning for several years.

In fact, there’s a trend of similar sporting events that have always been on the periphery of the sports landscape struggling to get the same attention they once held.  It’s like watching the prom queen from high school who always had that one shining moment at the reunion promptly run face first into the wall.

Here’s my crazy theory on why this is happening.  Horse racing, the Indy 500, tennis and a couple of other events are sort of like mom and pop stores.  They provide a quality product but not nearly at the same level as larger stores.  The major sports are basically Wal-Mart.  They’ve moved in, there’s access to them 24/7/365 with dedicated channels, year round network coverage and dedicated sites on the internet.  So the mom and pop stores are dying out because people don’t need them anymore.  There’s no such thing as a gap in the NFL season where a fan is left trying to find something else.  You can get daily coverage to not only the NFL but to your favorite team.  People just don’t have the interest level in these mom and pop events when they can go to Wal-Mart whenever they want and get exactly what they want.