Like thousands of race fans, I was thrilled when it was announced last year that ESPN would again be broadcasting NASCAR races in 2007.

Ever since the day ESPN broadcast their last race in the Fall of 2000, many of us have expressed the thought that of all the networks who had brought us NASCAR races, ESPN did the best job covering them.

And they did.

But not any more.

Gone is Bob Jenkins, who, even though he much preferred open wheel racing, did an absolutely great job as the anchor of each broadcast.

Gone is Gentleman Ned Jarrett, pushed into retirement by the emerging NASCAR partners of FOX and NBC in 2001.

Gone is Benny Parsons, his voice silenced forever in January of this year.

Gone is the excellent coverage we got from ESPN. In this new era of ESPN, we're treated to Dr. Jerry Punch, Andy Petree and Rusty Wallace in the broadcast booth, with a seeming cast of thousands ready to chime in at any time, and a host of idiotic graphics to help dumb the sport down as much as possible.

I am a huge fan of Dr. Punch, but he belongs on pit road, not in the booth - the job he did as a pit reporter was, in my opinion, the best you could hope for. In the booth, he's put into a role where he sometimes has to feign a lack of knowledge to elicit commentary from Andy and Rusty and it comes across as unnatural, because it is unnatural. He knows a helluva lot about the sport and he should be on pit road demonstrating that knowledge.

ESPN has a guy on pit road, Allen Bestwick, who is a natural in the booth. They have a guy in the booth, Dr. Jerry Punch, who is a natural on pit road. I'm no expert, but I know that if I were the producer of a show and wanted my fans to start liking it, I might think about a change.

Andy Petree, well, he's a failed team owner and he's doing a nice job of adding to that legacy as a broadcaster. Yes, he did win two Cup titles as a crew chief for Dale Earnhardt,and yes, the teams he owned did have a few good runs before they folded, but that doesn't make him a good choice for the broadcast booth. Knowledge only goes so far, you need personality as well.

Rusty Wallace is a NASCAR legend. The owner of a Cup championship and over 50 wins, his on track accomplishments speak for themselves. But, as a broadcaster, he leaves a lot to be desired. His use and overuse of terms such as "man" (as in, "man, I don't know what he was thinking), "there's that" (as in, "there's that aero loose we've been talking about"), "I tell ya" (as in, "man, I tell ya, I still don't know what he was thinking"), among others, wears thin very quickly.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that ESPN is the worst broadcast crew out there - TNT wins that election in a landslide - but they could certainly improve.

The ESPN producers should do one of two things:

They should watch the FOX broadcasts and take some serious notes.

OR

They should watch tapes of the races they used to broadcast and go back to their roots - get rid of the idiotic glitz and graphics, get a good team in the booth and show us racing the way we used to see it. It was, after all, what made them our all time favorites.