Mag Cancells Cotton Pickin' 100

[NorthAlabama]

Their headline- "Cotton Pickin' 100 on hold". “We’ve had the Magnolia State Cotton Pickin’ 100 scheduled for the same weekend the past five or so years, and all of the tracks in our region have done a good job of working together to not overlap one another with our end-of-the-year specials. However, this year a big two-day Super Late Model show got scheduled on top of us. There’s only so many fans and racers in this area to go around and splitting them between two big shows is no good for anybody. With no other suitable weekends for us to host the event without stepping on someone else, we’ve made the tough decision to not have the Magnolia State Cotton Pickin’ 100 this year,” said Magnolia Motor Speedway promoter, Johnny Stokes. “By no means does this mean that the Magnolia State Cotton Pickin’ 100 is going away for good. We just are putting it on hiatus for this year and are already looking at dates for next year that might work better. A racetrack is a business, and like any business, if you want to keep it open, you have to make the smartest decisions possible. To pay the kind of purses, like we have for the Magnolia State Cotton Pickin’ 100, you need all the support you can get, and again by splitting area fans and racers it makes it hard to make it all work. I hate it for the great fans, racers, and sponsors, but we’ll just look ahead to next year’s event.”

[50Dixon50]

Very sad but tough decisions sometimes have to be made

[Paradox28]

Its unfortunate that so many tracks will do this to other tracks in the area. People claim to "love the sport" but will 100% not work together with anyone so everyone wins.

[NorthAlabama]

Monroe LA is still a good drive from Columbus MS. The Mag have down sized their big purse races over time to spread it out over 3-4 nights to make more money off of everyone (fans and teams) declaring they are spreading the payouts to the lesser local drivers and not all of the purse to go to the top dog. They want the Top Dog Names but won't pay top dollar. WoO is having a $10,000/$20,000 at Monroe- two night race with the Mag at a $3,000/$12,000 payout, twice the win. So the Mag put the race on 'Hold' (DirtonDirt has it Cancelled). So the Mag has scheduled a Mississippi State Series race the Saturday Night before that date for $3,000 to win for SLMs, one of the lowest payout Series.

[NorthAlabama]

'all of the tracks in our region have done a good job of working together to not overlap one another' was written by Ben. I would disagree with that statement to some degree here in the Mid South; in the past, too many times I'd had to choose between two rare higher purse races on the same date with many other weekends open with no SLM racing for weeks upon weeks. Just this past Saturday Night, the Duck and TST were the same date, the Duck did cancelled due to rain chances that morning but ran a local show that night instead. Tracks are not working together.

[LM1]

I will be surprised if the Clash at the Mag is still a Lucas show next year unless they upgrade the 2 opening nights pay from $5k to win

[dirt crow]

Mag gotta do something about big races turning into one groove last half of race.

[One Man Gang]

I’ve been a fan of Magnolia for years and have attended multiple events there every year for past 15 years or so but the last 3 years maybe the racing has sucked. I don’t know what the problem is but it ain’t Johnny Stokes because he works his @ss off trying to get it right but it turns into a one grooved track at most events now. Years ago you never seen dust flying or dirt covering the stands and now it looks like a dust bowl at most big events. I agree on a 1 day show for the Clash and the Cotton Pickin in the future.

[NorthAlabama]

The last race, the low pay Thursday Night warm-up race, then changing the Friday Night race to the main weekend feature with Saturday Night high rain chances (at the last minute), hurt, even cutting the purse and laps, hurts even more. Say I have a large rig with a small crew. Wed is tuning and testing, some time on the engine, paying pit passes, four wheeler fee, and money spent at the concession and other cost, even for the crew. Thur is a $5k to win, paying the same cost again with time on the engine for little win money. Fri is changed with a lower pay feature win with same cost and more time on the engine, again. I'm going to go into the hole and not show up there again under those conditions unless I won the main feature, a bad deal from the Mag.....Question: Is Dr. Dirt renting the track on those two dates from the Mag owners who gets a percent of the cut like most promoters?