The ADRL was in tatters, its format sound but its financial state shaky and its reputation bruised. And with upstart rival X-DRL defunct after a disastrous debut, eighth-mile pro doorslammer drag racing was teetering on the edge of calamity.

So when a group of veteran racing colleagues from Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina convened New Year’s Eve day at Memphis to put the finishing touches on a new, stable sanctioning body they called the Professional Drag Racing Association, the talk was blunt – and positive – from the outset.

Mitchell Scruggs stood up and, without so much as a mention of the PDRA’s dysfunctional predecessors, laid out the blueprint for restoration of civility, financial stability, and focus on racing.

Two-time ADRL Pro Extreme champion and PDRA founding partner Jason Scruggs.

Rick Moore, the respected tech official who has teamed with former Piedmont Dragway owner and popular Big Dog Series founder Bob Harris to manage the PDRA’s day-to-day operations from Greensboro, N.C., remembered the meeting’s kickoff this way:

“Mr. Scruggs just kind of rolled up on the table and said, ‘I want to start this meeting by saying three things. The first thing I’m going to tell you is failure is not an option here.’ He said, ‘The four of us are going to invest in this series whatever it takes to make sure that failure is not an option. No. 2, we’re going to start with a clean sheet of paper. We need fresh faces. We need a fresh name. We need a fresh start. And that’s how it’s going to go.’ The third thing was that everybody that was going to be involved with the series was going to be of integrity. He was not interested in putting anybody’s face on it that had questionable character. He wants this thing to be crystal-clear, as clean as it can be. And the meeting took off from there.”

Scruggs and ADRL star son Jason Scruggs, of Tupelo, Miss., join fellow racers Gene Hector (Big Spring, Texas), Roger Henson (Bolivar, Tenn.), and Tommy Franklin (Fredericksburg, Va.) as owners.

Harris said in a phone interview from Chapel Hill, N.C., that the principles “put equal amounts of money up to form the PDRA.” He declined to announce the dollar figure but said, “I would say that it’s very well-funded.”

The bottom line for racers — in Pro Extreme and Pro Nitrous Pro Mod classes, as well as in Extreme Pro Stock, Pro Boost, Pro Extreme Motorcycle, Top Sportsman, Top Dragster, and Jr. Dragster — is that the series has plenty of money to pay racers. That was a failure of both the ADRL and X-DRL at times this past season.

“The unfortunate thing,” Harris said, “is that I know the X-DRL said this, too, last year, that they had enough money to carry on for X amount of years if they didn’t get any sponsorship.  I’m not going to be that bold to say that. But I would stake my reputation that we have the right amount of money to run this organization probably for several years if need be.

“We’re very lucky, though, that we have a lot of sponsors that have called us. We hadn’t even called them. They’re calling us. It shocked me, actually,” he said. “They want to be involved, because they know the people that are involved: Jason Scruggs – been around forever and ever and ever, has a very successful business. Roger Henson has a business. So does Gene Hector. So does Tommy Franklin. They’re all self-made businessmen. They all have great reputations. So I think the sponsors, along with the racers, feel like this is the real deal. This is not going to flounder if we have a bad race or we have a bad year. It’s not going to go away. It’s just going to continue to get better.”

Said Harris, “Let’s say we had a couple of races that got rained out or it rained enough where the spectators may not come as much as they would if it was a beautiful, sunny day. The thing they really worked on was they put enough money in to make sure that nothing could happen. If we don’t have any spectators show up and it’s just a bad day and we race, at the end of the race, everybody will be paid. They’re very adamant about that. All the owners, they all got great morals. We all believe in the same thing. The bottom line is they did capitalize very well, and it definitely will be a great series.”

Moore, of Greensboro, whose most recent experience has been with the Extreme Outlaw Pro Mod Series and the ADRL, called the PDRA owners “a team of guys that are racers themselves who are extremely dedicated to not only their own aspirations but to the sport of drag racing as a whole. For these four gentlemen to step up to the plate and put forth the monetary effort, not to mention the work that’s involved with all of it, it’s just unparalleled.

“Jason and Mitchell Scruggs, they just have a reputation that’s unsurpassed. I got to work with Tommy Franklin in the Extreme Outlaw Pro Mod Series last year. Tommy got involved with us at a very generous level. And when Tommy asked to become a partner in the PDRA, I knew what they had in Tommy Franklin and the Franklin family – just salt-of-the-earth kind of people. You just don’t find people like them on every corner. Jason and Mitchell, the same way: just the finest people you could ever dream being around,” he said.

Moore said he met Gene Hector and his “Small Block Mafia” crew this past year. Sometimes Moore arrived at the racetrack before his tech trailer did, and he said Hector always was first to offer him whatever he needed to do his job. “And Roger Henson, what a guy,” Moore said of the “Widowmaker” Corvette owner and West Tennessee trucking company boss. “I just can’t say enough about the four principles of the new PDRA. It’s a very, very solid organization.”

Harris said the PDRA is “pretty close” to naming a series sponsor.

“Obviously, this just came up in the last two or three weeks. And we’re working really hard in that,” he said. “How soon it will be I can’t tell you.”

He said he’s confident the PDRA will make a strong debut so that it will be an attractive package for the 2015 season and beyond. “Either way, funding for the racers is there,” Harris said.

“Unfortunately, with so many things that have happened in the last year or two, sponsorship is not quite as easy to obtain. Not only that, it’s kind of already late in the season, even though it’s just January. A lot of companies already have got their budgets for next year,” he said.

Moore said, “We’ve had some contact with sponsors, and they’re reserved. They’re kind of standoffish because of what’s happened in our world. And they want to see some proof in the pudding.”

The PDRA owners, he said “understood that coming in. We were going to be behind the eight-ball. We have a great team with Bob Harris and myself. Bob has been running race shows and promoting big race programs for the last 30 years. He made the Big Dog show at a local eighth-mile dragstrip in Greensboro, N.C., one of the largest and longest-running drag-racing shows in the country. I’ve been racing forever and ever and ever. I enjoy the promotional side of it.”

Moore said, “My dad taught me that you had to be a man of your word. Your word is your bond. That’s just such a hard trait to come by these days. But I can tell you, these people – the Scruggses, the Franklins, the Hensons, the Hectors, these guys are extremely successful business people. I just can’t tell you how successful they are. They got that way by being honorable. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t be where they are.”

Where they are in racing is at the head of an eight-race series (running at Rockingham, N.C.; Valdosta, Ga.; Memphis; Martin, Mich.; Richmond, Va.; and Tulsa) that’s poised to expand to 10 events next year.

They’re laying the groundwork, in Harris’ words, to treat the racers “like they’re supposed to be treated. The bottom line is the racers are customers, and they’re going to be treated like kings and queens. It’s a huge deal.”

More agreed the only drama they’re seeking is quality racing on the track: “It’s all about racing. And that’s what it should be all about. We have to provide entertainment. It’s our job to put that on in a manner so that after Rockingham’s over we’re going to have people in North Carolina saying, ‘Man, we’re going to have to drive to Valdosta to see what’s going to happen next!’ “

And they’re preparing to show the fans a terrific time.

“When you come in our gates,” Harris said, “we’re going to shake your hand and welcome you to our race. And when you leave, we’re going to hand you a bottle of water and probably a Snickers bar and tell you, ‘Have a safe trip home and we hope to see you at the next race.’ That’s going to be our attitude. It’s not going to change.

“We know it’ll work,” he said. “There is no way this thing is going to fail. It can’t. People say, ‘Well, anything can fail.’ Well, no, it can’t fail because of the money, because the money’s there. It can’t fail because of [no] love of the sport. We’ve got the love of the sport. It can’t fail because the racers are not going to support you, because they are going to support us.

“The only people who can mess this deal up is ourselves,” Harris said. “As long as we do what we know is right from our hearts, this organization is going to be great.”

Moore said the owners “realized the need to bring back stability and credibility to eighth-mile pro drag racing” and feared that had they not stepped forward with the PDRA, “eighth-mile pro drag racing would have settled back into local series all across the country and the national scene would definitely fall by the wayside. That would have left a worse taste in the mouths of the sponsors from last year and years prior who had spent so much money into trying to keep what we’re doing alive. It’s going to take awhile to regain their trust and for them to see what our mission is – and that it will be accomplished.”

He said he counts ADRL President Kenny Nowling as a personal friend but also “knew the face of drag racing, as we know it for the eighth-mile show, needed to change. It needed a facelift. It needed a makeover.”

Among the successes so far is a deal with Motor Mania TV for live Internet streaming, SFI Foundation membership, and progress in securing ASO (Associate Sanctioning Organization) certification with the NHRA.

“It’s going to be done exactly right.” Moore said. “That’s what the principles have set forth to us. It has to be perfect. It has to be done with excellence. And that’s Bob’s and my job. These guys have given us every avenue to make this the best eighth-mile pro drag racing series that we’ve ever seen.”

Like a benevolent General Patton, Mitchell Scruggs laid out the strategy. It came on the dawn of a new year, signaling the dawn of a new era in this specialized form of drag racing. All the management group has to do is stick to Scruggs’ blueprint.