The savvy Thunderbirds – not wanting to compete for headlines and dollars against Vancouver’s Winter Olympics – decided to push back next year’s tourney a few weeks. It will end Sunday, Feb. 28. They made that known more than a year in advance.

That, of course, pits the FBR directly against the unsponsored Arizona Nationals over at Firebird International Raceway, in Chandler.

I explained all of this to NHRA last February. As a former CART and IROC official, I understand scheduling is a tough task. But I urged them to make a one-time date change to avoid the Open. I said the lack of publicity would be uglier than a rod through the side of a block.

I thought they understood.

Silly me.

There it is – the ’10 Full Throttle schedule. And there is Firebird, exactly the same week as the FBR.

Let me explain the dimensions of this decision this way:  I wrote a TOTAL of seven NHRA-at-Firebird stories this year for the Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper. It’s no exaggeration to say there will be seven stories A DAY on golf. Traditionally, many TV anchors and radio hosts do their shows directly from the TPC course, such is the magnitude of the happening.

Anyone who comprehends anything about the local press scene will tell you this: The Thunderbirds are masterful at building and maintaining positive relationships with the media. They WORK at it on a year-round basis. If Firebird’s management -- which has precisely zero relationships with any Valley of the Sun journalists (including me) – summoned-up the energy to educate themselves as to the extent of the Thunderbirds’ PR efforts, well, they’d probably have be hospitalized for exhaustion.

As best I can determine, NHRA’s and Firebird’s reasoning is racing and golf are two different audiences. Well, gentlemen, it’s the SAME media outlets. In the race for news coverage, you’ve already lost.

As someone who made a career in the Business of Racing, events of the past year have rendered me a disspirited tracker of the NHRA sport. I consider it a crisis of confidence.

I am late to that realization. But this I know: No enterprise can stand in the face of such poor decision-making, lack of attention-to-detail, and neglected one-on-one communications. Especially, in this case, when given the gift of six months advance warning.

I feel sorry for the car sponsors who will leave the major Phoenix market publicity poor.

For NHRA and Firebird Raceway, though, I have no sympathy for the pain they will suffer from a needless, self-inflicted wound.