NASCAR: Michael Jordan already being snubbed as a team owner

By Asher Fair | Dec 12, 2020

Michael Jordan, 23XI Racing, NASCAR (Photo by FRANCK FIFE/AFP via Getty Images) /

Michael Jordan is already being snubbed as a NASCAR Cup Series owner, with no mention of his ownership of 23XI Racing in the annual FanSided 250.

Tuesday saw the release of the fifth annual FanSided 250, a huge compilation of fanbases in sports and entertainment ranked from #250 the #1 by FanSided, the parent network of Beyond the Flag and hundreds of other sports and entertainment-based websites.

NASCAR, as usual, was snubbed. But we all knew that was going to happen.

After ranking #71 in 2016 and #24 in 2017, it hasn’t managed to rank in the top 250 since, and their lone representative in this year’s FanSided 250, their first since Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2018, didn’t even rank for reasons having anything to do with the actual racing (their explanation, not mine).

But this year’s snub goes beyond the fact that the sport’s top performers and most popular drivers didn’t get the recognition they deserve.

One other NASCAR figure, aside from the lone ranked driver, came in at #49 overall and #11 in sports figures.

The problem?

Nothing about NASCAR was discussed in the justification for his ranking!

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Six-time NBA champion Michael Jordan partnered with Denny Hamlin to buy a Cup Series team for the 2021 season and beyond. That team, 23XI Racing, is a one-car team, and Bubba Wallace is set to be the driver of the #23 Toyota after spending three seasons at Richard Petty Motorsports.

Wallace, if you haven’t already guessed, is the lone NASCAR driver in the FanSided 250 this year.

None of that is touched upon in the explanation for Jordan’s ranking. But given the overall disrespect for NASCAR in this list, we seriously doubt it would have made much of a difference.

Here is the blurb about Jordan.

"“Our undying love for Michael Jordan was reignited when his 10 part documentary series The Last Dance aired in 2020.”"

Cool. Not arguing with that.

But how about mentioning the fact that arguably the greatest basketball player of all-time bought a NASCAR team?

How about mentioning the fact that the team signed Wallace, who was (for some reason) the only NASCAR driver on the list (over Chase Elliott, the sport’s most popular champion since 1988, and Jimmie Johnson, the seven-time champion whose 2020 season was a massive farewell tour), as his driver?

And here is the part that makes absolutely no sense: how do you have Wallace on this list for something that has absolutely nothing to do with NASCAR (again, their explanation, not mine) and not even mention Jordan’s Cup ownership when ranking him?

Next. Top 10 NASCAR drivers of all-time. dark

At the end of the day, the path for NASCAR to actually get a driver (or any figure) onto this list for something that has to do with racing is a long one, if it even exists at this point. The fact that neither Elliott nor Johnson made this year’s list practically solidifies that there is no way for that to change in the foreseeable future. But we admittedly already knew that.

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