Early promotional career While at Middle Tennessee, Gossage considered getting a job at the local
Nashville International Raceway. After getting a recommendation from fellow
Tennessean sportswriter
Larry Woody, he was hired to become the director of public relations at the speedway in April 1980. He earned $9,000 (adjusted for inflation, $) annually for the job. According to himself, the work he did for the speedway was strenuous; he, on numerous occasions, had to be the janitor, a grass-keeper, the chef, and the pace car driver. In addition, the job delayed his graduation from Middle Tennessee to 1982. As a result of the purchase, Baker moved Gossage to become the assistant general manager and the public relations director of Bristol International Raceway in February, with Tom Roberts taking his place at Nashville. Under Gossage's work, the Bristol International Raceway saw renovations and improvement, bringing over $20 million (adjusted for inflation, $) in revenue to the
Tri-Cities area annually. Along with this, he, along with Baker, negotiated the live coverages of races held at Bristol and for the speedway to host events for the
1982 World's Fair. He also made attempts to try and broaden the market of stock car racing, which at the time had been stuck to a mainly Southeastern and Appalachian market. In November 1981, California businessman
Warner W. Hodgdon purchased half of the interest from Baker for the Bristol International Raceway. By late 1983, Hodgdon managed to purchase complete control of both the Bristol International Raceway and the Nashville International Raceway, where both Gossage and Roberts worked, respectively. Hodgdon was heavily disliked, according to Roberts, who called him "one of the biggest charlatans I had ever encountered"; Gossage and Roberts made efforts to look for another job. By September, Gossage had resigned from his position at the Bristol International Raceway. The next month, Gossage joined the
Miller Brewing Company, based in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the marketing communications supervisor for the company's racing program. During this timespan, he reported that he had to spend 40 weekends a year traveling to events, exposing him to several types of racing, including
CART,
IMSA,
NHRA,
hydroplanes, and
tractor pulling. and had to announce the injury statuses of both Allison and
Mike Alexander, both of whom were injured in 1988. However, by 1989, Gossage grew tired of constant traveling that the company required. As a result, he left the Miller Brewing Company and joined the
Charlotte Motor Speedway in February 1989 as the vice president of public relations.
Charlotte Motor Speedway promoter
Humpy Wheeler (pictured above) from 1989 to 1994. Gossage credited Wheeler for much of his success.|alt=A headshot of NASCAR businessman Humpy Wheeler. Wheeler is displayed wearing a grey suit and red tie. Gossage worked under the president and general manager of the Charlotte Motor Speedway and longtime promoter
Humpy Wheeler throughout his tenure at the speedway. Before his tenure, the position was considered to be one of the most feared, with many having quit in a short time period. According to Wheeler, he called the position "the most pressured job in racing, mostly because of [
sic]". However, he credited much of his success and influence from Wheeler, with Gossage serving the position longer than anyone before his tenure. He stated that, "he made you better... he made everyone do better than they think they can". During a "grand opening" and the first public testing of the lights, Bruton Smith, Gossage's boss and then-owner of the Charlotte Motor Speedway, was invited to switch on the lights by using a prop switch. When Smith flipped the prop switch, pyrotechnics that shot off the top of the switch malfunctioned, leading to sparks hitting Smith's head, burning him. The incident was recorded by the local Charlotte media and later sent nationally via satellite. While Smith was only treated as an outpatient for burns on his head, Gossage thought that due to the incident, he would be fired immediately. Gossage was told by Smith that he had taken the promotion "a little too far" before Smith headed to the hospital to be treated as an outpatient. By November, the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Smith and Gossage had made their final choices in either of the two places. In St. Louis, the duo found various parcels of land that had been recently flooded by the Mississippi River. Knowing that they could not hold racing in areas that could easily flood, the two scratched off St. Louis as the final construction site for the speedway. In Dallas–Fort Worth, the duo met businessman
Ross Perot Jr. and flew in Perot's helicopter to scout a piece of land that was owned by Perot. After the two saw the land and its surrounding area, Gossage mouthed to Smith, "This is it!", with Smith agreeing. pictured in 2017. Gossage and
Bruton Smith were instrumental to the track's construction.|alt=A wide shot of the Texas Motor Speedway's front stretch in 2017, with the grandstands and the facility's infield being photographed. Groundbreaking of the Texas Motor Speedway started on April 11, 1995. While Gossage was then told by Smith to worry about "working for Humpy" and not Texas, to Gossage's disappointment, in late May, Smith suddenly offered him the job of running the speedway, which he accepted. According to Smith and Gossage, the track was inspired by many aspects of previous tracks that Smith owned, wanting to incorporate the best aspects from those tracks and expanding on those ideas for Texas. In July 1996, dates for a
NASCAR Winston Cup Series race were set, with a date from the
North Wilkesboro Speedway being moved to Texas; this move generated considerable controversy, as North Wilkesboro had been a mainstay on the NASCAR schedule since NASCAR's beginning. A date was set in April 1997. The next month, Gossage announced that the
Indy Racing League (IRL) would stage the first ever night race held at the speedway, to be held in June. The track immediately saw turmoil in its first couple of years. In the track's first year, at the
Interstate Batteries 500, heavy rain had come during the race's weekend, causing qualifying to be cancelled and the grass parking lots of the speedway to be heavily soaked. While the issue was eventually resolved by using busses, further issues were raised when drivers started to complain about the surface of the race track, leading to a major first lap pileup. Two months later at the IRL race, the
1997 True Value 500, a scoring dispute between
Billy Boat and
Arie Luyendyk occurred when Luyendyk disputed the victory that was initially given to Boat. While Boat and his team owner,
A. J. Foyt, were celebrating in victory lane, Luyendyk went to victory lane to dispute the victory, stating that the unofficial scoring had counted him one lap short. While there, he demanded an explanation from officials and claimed that he had won the race. Foyt proceeded to slap Luyendyk on the back of his head, knocking him to the ground before security separated the two. After a scoring recheck, Luyendyk was declared the official winner, with the scoring error being blamed on a computer glitch. After both races, Gossage announced that the speedway would reprofile the fourth turn, a source of many complaints. Complaints lasted in 1998, with drivers complaining of a new bump in the turn. After a t-shirt printed by NASCAR that stated "Shut Up and Race" became a source of controversy that accused Gossage of not taking complaints seriously, he pledged to fix the turn after the race, this time with more success. After the race, Gossage submitted his letter of resignation from his position, stating in interviews with reporter Terry Blount in 2009, "I knew [Bruton] needed a scapegoat. So many bad things had happened... Maybe Bruton would be better off with someone else in charge." However, Bruton adamantly refused to allow him to leave, stating his confidence that he had picked the right person to run the track. In its earliest years, the speedway hosted multiple large concerts. Days after the 1997 IRL race, a two-day country music festival,
Country Fest, was held at the speedway. The event attracted around 260,000 people. A week later, the speedway held RockFest '97, a rock music festival that attracted around 400,000 people. In 1999 and 2000, the speedway held NASCAR Winston Cup Series races that attracted 221,861 and 223,000 people, respectively, some of the largest attendance numbers on record for a NASCAR race. In 2001, the track planned to run a
Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) race, the
Firestone Firehawk 600, but the race was eventually cancelled after it was found that drivers would suffer extreme vertical
g-loads that could have led to death. Gossage and the speedway eventually sued CART for
breach of contract, settling for an unspecified amount in the "multimillions". In addition, CART races in 2002 and 2003 were annulled.
Later years, repave With the city of
Dallas proposing a bid to host the
2012 Summer Olympics, in 2000, Gossage proposed the integration of motorsports into the Olympic Games as a
demonstration sport. Gossage proposed using the speedway as a racing venue, along with using the track for several other sports. In 2002, he made attempts to move the
Red River Showdown from the
Cotton Bowl to the speedway, which, if implemented, would break a 71-year tradition. The decision was met with relative surprise, causing
State Fair of Texas officials to state that the contract to play the game in the Cotton Bowl was set to last until 2006. The proposal never went through, though Gossage expressed new hope to host it following the Battle at Bristol in 2016. In 2007, rumors speculated that Gossage would replace the commissioner of the
NHL,
Gary Bettman. Both Gossage and the NHL denied the claims, with Gossage stating that he was loyal to SMI and Texas Motor Speedway. Gossage implemented numerous format changes to the speedway's NASCAR and IndyCar races in 2011. For both NASCAR Sprint Cup races, he made the decision to run both races at nighttime, making the races the first ever NASCAR Sprint Cup Series night races held at the speedway. For the annual IndyCar race held at the speedway, he took the traditional race and split the race into two separate races, with both races counting as two individual races for that year's championship. In addition, half the amount of purse money and points were given for each race, and the second race's starting lineup was determined by a random draw. In September 2013, he announced the construction of
Big Hoss TV, a television that was set to become the world's largest HD video display. As a result of the construction of the video screen, the backstretch grandstand, which numbered to nearly 10,000 seats, was demolished in order to build the video screen. The video screen was completed in March 2014, in time for the
2014 Duck Commander 500 race in early April. On April 6, the video screen was officially certified by the
Guinness Book of World Records as the largest HD television LED screen in the world. Complaints were made against the Texas Motor Speedway's track surface in June 2016 for being too difficult to dry when rain came down on the track. Complaints were made again in November, when the
2016 AAA Texas 500 was delayed for seven hours due to rain. In statements made in November, Gossage stated that he had no plans to repave the track in the short-term, quoting the opinions of NASCAR drivers
Jimmie Johnson and
Carl Edwards. However, by January 2017, he announced the commencement of a repave, stating concerns of the track being too difficult to dry. With the repave, the banking in the first two turns was decreased from 24 to 20 degrees, and the racing surface was expanded from 60 to 80 feet. He later credited SMI CEO
Marcus G. Smith for directing the repave in February in an interview with the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In the later years of Gossage's tenure at Texas Motor Speedway, the speedway saw a sharp decline in attendance. By November 2019, Gossage made calls to "modernize" the speedway, calling for a decrease of capacity from 135,000 seats to a stated range from 80,000 to 90,000, along with better internet services, a wider concession variety, and more suites. Gossage also stated his defense that the track, even with decreased attendance, would still fill up the grandstands of smaller tracks, like
Martinsville Speedway.
Transition from track president to motivational speaker By the summer of 2020, Gossage engaged in talks with Marcus Smith of whether to retire from being the president and general manager of the Texas Motor Speedway. Around this time, he grew upset at the IndyCar racing product that was caused by the track's surface, which had essentially been made to improve only the NASCAR racing product. In addition, he had grown worn out by consequences suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic. By early December, he stated to Smith that he would retire after working 32 years with SMI and 25 years directing the Texas Motor Speedway. Gossage himself did not state a successor; Marcus announced on August 4 that Texas Motor Speedway executive Rob Ramage had been promoted to replace Gossage as the general manager of the speedway. John Sturbin, a former motorsports writer for the
Star-Telegram, put out a rumor that stated Gossage disagreed heavily with the moving of Texas Motor Speedway's spring date in 2021 to the
Circuit of the Americas, a decision made by SMI. According to the rumor put out by Sturbin, due to Gossage's disagreement, he was given an ultimatum by Marcus to either resign or to be fired by SMI. Gossage denied the rumor, stating, "There’s no truth to that at all, absolutely not. I would have a problem (with COTA) were it not for the fact that it’s us... it’s [managed by] Speedway Motorsports. Know what I mean?" Following his retirement from Texas Motor Speedway, Gossage focused solely on a public speaking career. According to himself, the reason for transitioning to a motivational speaking career was that he had always enjoyed being a "manager of people". Having helped various prominent figures in NASCAR to get their start, such as former NASCAR president
Mike Helton, he self-proclaimed that he wanted to teach people how to become the best version of themselves by teaching lessons that he himself had learned over his career. He also self-proclaimed that the job was an "extension of himself" and that "there was a certain demand" for him to become a motivational speaker. == Promotions ==