[TheMightyM]

ISC President John Saunders, during the company's conference call on its second-quarter earnings:

All in all, the attendance was a little softer than expected. We still have an issue with star power. Hopefully this stable of young drivers coming along will start to win and build their brands.

The Charlotte Observer's Brendan Marks finds this ridiculous. His key point:

The biggest issue with what Saunders said is simple: It's another excuse.

And that's a sign of a much larger problem with NASCAR.

Every time a NASCAR executive comes out and offers up some half-baked excuse, like Saunders did, it fails to address the deeper, more intrinsic issues with the sport. It's just kicking the can, shoving those issues further down the line — or in this case, down the racing lineage — for someone else to deal with.

Yup.