Ex-racer aims to showcase sport on reality TV

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -- Thee Dixon has been around racing since 1957, first racing motorcycles and stock cars himself, then owning a race team that competes irregularly in NASCAR's top division.

If things go according to plan this year, people will see more of Dixon and his Nextel Cup team, one of a handful of black owners to field racecars on any NASCAR circuit in recent years, at the track and potentially on TV.

Dixon, whose race career was wrecked because of injuries, has entered an agreement with some local TV producers to have the No. 85 team followed as part of a planned reality TV show that highlights the expensive and nerve-wracking world of NASCAR.

All he and Black Knight Communications need is a sponsor to film a pilot show, with the ultimate goal of producing a one-hour weekly reality TV series based on the Mansion Motorsports team.

Of course, finding someone willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to have their company's name or logo displayed on the hood of a car buzzing around an oval track at up to 180 mph is no easy task.

Dixon and his TV producers know that.

"The possibilities are endless and the publicity will be overwhelming if we can make this happen," TV producer Sandy Freeman said. "We've put a picture of that car in Photo Shop and have been sending out pictures of it to potential sponsors with their name on it."

The show's concept is to follow the Mansion Motorsports Team to the races and cover the action: from the black owner to a black driver (to be named once a sponsor is secured), to a Hispanic pit crew (made up of painters who work for Dixon during the week), to a white team manager ... whatever may come -- happiness, heartache, tragedy or comedy.

Dixon formed his then-Winston Cup team in the 1980s and has continued to field cars through the years and also has a team racing in the Craftsman Truck Series. As NASCAR looks to generate more interest in its sport among the black community, Black Knight Communications executives think Dixon is the perfect fit.

BKC, owned by Jim Singleton of PRADCom Communications and Freeman and partner Rob Shoaf of the Freeman Group, has signed an exclusive agreement with Dixon's Mansion Motorsports to develop the reality series.

In Dixon, they have a competitor who has been around racing in some way for more than four decades, going back to his own racing days. Unlike other former and potential owners who are black, such as Julius "Dr. J" Erving and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Dixon understands the racing game because he has lived it.

"I used to ride old Harleys with the spikes in the tires," said Dixon, who decided he wanted to drive racecars more than 20 years ago. "I went to Martinville to buy a racecar and the guy didn't want to sell it to me because I was a 'man of color.' So I messed around and I bought one anyway."

That was a late model stock car. He later moved up to the Sportsman series (now called the Busch Series) and had two bad crashes.

"My honey, she told me I needed to stop doing that," he recalled. "She didn't mind me owning them, but I had to quit driving them. I went about six months where I didn't know where I was. Messed the old coconut up. ... Anyway, I woke up six months later and the world looked different to me. That's when Mike Skinner took over."

From 1989 to 1992, Skinner sat behind the wheel of Dixon's car, racing in a number of races each year, but when a sponsor couldn't be found in 1992 Skinner moved on to another team. Since then, Dixon has been showing up off and on at races, the best year in recent history being 2000 when his team tried to qualify for 10 races and raced in two, finishing 32nd and 41st in those two events.

Tom Jensen, managing editor of the weekly publication, "National Speed Sport News," believes NASCAR wants more diversity on the track.

"I think NASCAR would love nothing more than to have a successful black driver and a successful Hispanic driver and a successful female driver," he said.

But sponsorship is a big factor for all racing teams. From Jensen's experience, a top team may spend more than $3 million a season to field a top-notch car.

"Rick Hendrick, who has won five championships, said the budget for his four-car team is about $12 million," Jensen said.

And NASCAR has changed a lot during the past two decades. Now, when the top 43 cars qualify to start a race, there are very few non-qualifiers waiting in the wings, as opposed to a couple of decades ago when a dozen cars or more might fail to get into a race.

"There aren't any amateurs or weekend competitors," Jensen said. "It's pretty much people who all do this full time for a living, and it is an incredibly competitive field.

"It varies from race to race, but typically only one or two of the qualifiers don't make it. The reason is it costs so much money that the guys who don't have a chance of making it don't try anymore."

Sponsor support has dried up in relation to the bottom line of fielding a team, according to Jensen.

"Sponsor money is the hardest commodity to come by in motor racing right now, because the costs have gone up so much," he said. "Jack Roush is looking for a full-time sponsor for Jeff Burton's car and Jeff Burton's car finished 12th in the points last year. Jeff is somebody who has finished in the top five in points consistently and is somebody who is an excellent spokesman for a product and they can't find a sponsor."

The Freeman Group thinks it has an ace in the hole with its Hollywood connections. Thom Mount, a Durham native and owner of The Mount Company, has a NASCAR background as former owner (with Burt Reynolds) of the Skoal Bandit Racing Team. Mount has agreed to assist in marketing the series to the networks, according to Freeman.

The Black Knight project sprang from a Dixon biography written by Singleton. The consultant with Webb Patterson Communications of Durham met Dixon through Jim Patterson, president and CEO of the P.R. company. Patterson, working to find sponsors for the project, called Dixon "a friend of mine and a guy who is a unique personality."

Always a NASCAR fan "as far back as I can remember," Patterson first learned of Dixon in a news article.

"I'd never heard of him, and here he was the only black owner of a NASCAR team and he had been out there since the '80s doing two or three races a year and basically doing it out of his pocket," Patterson said.

It could cost upwards of a million dollars to field a team from scratch, according to Singleton, but Dixon has a lot of the details already in place, with the cars and organization.

The No. 85 black Dodge will be the focal point of the planned TV show, which makes its hood a great place to slap a big ad.

Singleton said the going rate for hood space for one race (and one TV show) is $100,000. The trunk is another a great place for an ad for $25,000, while ads on the sides cost about $10,000 each.

"You can put advertising all over a car," Singleton said.

"The perfect situation right now would be to have several sponsors and raise enough money to do a minimum of two races and maybe three," Freeman said.

"Once we get the major sponsors, we know we can put the machinery in motion," Shoaf said. "And if we get a major sponsor, other sponsors will come."

There are no guarantees any car will qualify for a race, but "there's intrinsic value in just doing it," Singleton said.

"Even if you don't qualify, you still have a show, and it's never been done before."

There are also no guarantees the series will sell. Hundreds of pilots are pitched in Hollywood each year and the odds are long, but Freeman still believes in this project.

"What puts us way out ahead of the pack is that Thom Mount is interested," he said.

In the meantime, it is time for a sponsor to step up. Dixon has been on his own long enough, said Freeman.

As for Dixon, racing is in his blood. There is no other explanation.

"Racing is the largest spectator sport in the world. Did you hear what I said? The largest spectator sport in the world," said Dixon, figuring that was explanation enough for his love of the sport.