Why is jeff gordon hated

At the Coca-Cola , however, everything changed when Gordon got his first win. The legend of Gordon was born, with every passing year, he collected more and more wins. Seven in , 10 in the two years following, and a career-best 13 wins in The racing world had a new face, meaning that former gods like Dale Earnhardt Sr. Petty as it may be, fans took ire to this trend.

Gordon never again had a year like , but for most of his remaining days, he remained one of the winningest racers in the game. He constantly finished in the top five, won anywhere from one to five races, and showed why he was one of the best. After several years of slumping, however, Gordon retired in after races — 93 of them wins. People hate seeing that their favorite winners are no longer the top of the sport, and Gordon was the person making this a reality.

Shane Walters wrote about his hatred of Gordon in My hatred for Jeff Gordon lasted until The edge of the drivers had been grounded off. The new driver personalities were robotic. The strong edgy characters of the drivers in the sport were gone.

With the exception of Jeff Gordon who was in the sport just early enough to pick up a bit of the old style. I had an epiphany realization that I had actually come full circle. I was now a fan of Jeff Gordon. His th start will end his career at the short track of Martinsville Speedway. I'm not here to save you. I'm just here for the ride. So, let me entertain you and everything will be fine.

I Hated Jeff Gordon until…. Motorsports Blog. Modern Minimalist Oil Painting White Modern Minimalist Painting In retrospect, it was the situation that was thrust upon him, and the people who surrounded him, that bred the contempt. So, in turn, after every win he got showered with boos and, in some cases, beer cans. Besides pushing Gordon through the ranks exceptionally quickly for the time period sprint cars by 16, Busch Grand National by 20 and Winston Cup by 22 , Bickford can be credited with masterminding the marketing schemes that caused Gordon to be so overexposed.

Ray Evernham, Gordon's first crew chief, earned a reputation for pushing the boundaries of the rulebook see the story on the infamous T-Rex car that obliterated the field at the Winston and drew more ire as the win count rose. And then there was car owner Rick Hendrick, who used Gordon's success on the track as a means to raise sponsorship fees, allowing him to flat outspend the the competition and creating an arms race that NASCAR still can't seem to corral.

The guys who became Gordon's rivals didn't help his cause, either. While everyone romanticizes the year-long battle with Dale Earnhardt in , for my money it was the ongoing saga versus Mark Martin in and that truly defines the dominance era in Gordon's career. Martin, a small, soft-spoken driver from Arkansas with an inexplicable affinity for rap music , had been in Cup with Jack Roush and Ford for almost a decade after beating personal demons and struggling in the lower divisions, and after several near-misses at the Cup, was back in a position to finally take it.

Except, Gordon, seemingly every week, was there thwarting his hopes. Gordon's tires always seemed to last longer, the breaks always fell his way. When Gordon won Michigan the week after Martin's father passed, fans were up in arms that a poetic moment of Martin winning in his honor was lost. Martin was the exact type of driver the majority of NASCAR's southern fanbase could identify with, and Gordon, having risen so quickly, could only be seen as the heel. For myself, who had about 8 Mark Martin diecasts and a giant poster hanging on my wall, Gordon was Public Enemy 1, the Habs to my Bruins.

Nothing was more sinister than that rainbow colored His brightly colored car drew kids in like no other stock car before or since, and with a cool demeanor and no southern drawl, he appealed to both fans in places that weren't traditional NASCAR markets, and to the sponsors and marketers that wanted to sell to those fans. No longer was Winston Cup a regional phenomenon, it was now must-see TV on national networks.

By the turn of the millennium, Fox and NBC would open up their pocketbooks to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to get the rights to air the top 3 divisions of the sport.