Offside Undo.(Brief Article)

Holier than thou, this may sound, but did you see the crucifixion Fox Sports gave select teams in the network's premier 2001 television coverage at the Daytona 500 qualifying? Talk about pay for play.

It started with the $2.8 billion contract Fox and NBC cut to cover the mother of all sports marketing series, NASCAR. They beat out longtime television hosts CBS and ESPN to bring left-leaning Southerners (a comment on the cars rather than political affiliation) to your living room. It was a coup that put Fox closer to the big leagues.

You know who foots the bill: advertisers. With NASCAR, well, the joint is lousy with advertising sponsors. The thing is that NASCAR's sponsors didn't flock to Fox with the ferocity Fox flocked to them. And herein lies the ethical evisceration Fox wrought: In an effort to give Fox's NASCAR advertising sponsors ``a little bump'' during 500 qualifying, Fox engineers digitally deleted from the noses and hoods of cars the names of those NASCAR sponsors who chose not to buy airtime on Fox. Fox removed the sponsors from the sport for the grid and driver introduction.

This pay-for-airplay move did not go unnoticed, by the media who cried First Amendment violation, by non-advertising sponsors or by NASCAR itself.

Before this sounds like sour grapes or sanctimonious Fourth-Estate gibberish, understand the magazine corollary: for us to report only on cars whose advertisers buy four-color ...