Dr. Jerry Punch has been through this before.

But that doesn't make it any easier.

In 2000, ESPN lost the broadcast rights to NASCAR Winston Cup races, ending a

262-race run that began in 1981.

Five years later, the network reclaimed the broadcast rights, signing an eight-year deal to show the final 17 races of the season. However, that deal expires this season.

Next year, NBC Sports takes over the final 20 Sprint Cup races after signing a 10-year partnership with NASCAR. Fox Sports will air the other Cup races.

Today's GoBowling.com 400 marks ESPN's final telecast from Pocono Raceway for at least a decade.

"I try not to think, ‘This is the last time I'm going to Daytona or the Brickyard or the beautiful mountains of Pocono,' " said Punch, who has been with ESPN for more than 30 years and will serve as a pit reporter in today's race. "But it's hard not to.

"Pocono has always been special to us. It always was a breath of fresh air, both literally and figuratively, to go up there, walk into the resorts, go jogging and see deer and the wildlife. It completely lowered the pulse and all the stress levels of the sport."

Most of all, though, Pocono's unique triangular layout made the races exciting to cover, he said.

When Punch first started

covering races here, he was an announcer in turn 1, standing on a scaffolding.

"If they missed that turn, they were going to be in my lap," Punch said. "It got your attention very quickly."

Punch compares Pocono's 3,740-foot long, 95-foot wide frontstraight to the landing strip at New York's LaGuardia Airport.

Allen Bestwick, who will call play-by-play of today's race, agrees. He thinks there is no more exciting shot in the sport than the one that the turn-1 camera gets looking back down the front stretch during a restart.

"They drop the green flag and you see them fan out four- and five-wide," Bestwick said. "That's just fun stuff. It's a different look than you get any place else."

Because of the three different corners at Pocono, Bestwick said you never get confused where the cars are on the track.

"Some places, when you cut camera shots on a lap, it can be tough to tell whether the cars are in turn 1 or turn 3," Bestwick said. "There are no such questions at Pocono."

Both men have their share of memorable Pocono moments.

For Punch, there was the time Neil Bonnett struck a deer that wandered onto the track during practice. When Bonnett brought his car back to the garage, a leg was sticking out of the grill.

Or when Tim Richmond nipped Ricky Rudd and Geoffrey Bodine at the finish line in July 1986 despite the fact Richmond had bent the car's chassis in an early race incident.

When Jeff Gordon won a rain-shortened race in August 2012, Bestwick recalls the joy on Gordon's face because his children were celebrating in a makeshift Victory Lane with him.

Light-hearted moments, like the time on a pre-race show when Punch completed a pass to former Berwick High School and University of Notre Dame quarterback Ron Powlus.

"Jimmy Spencer snapped the ball to me, Powlus threw a little skinny post route and I, in my ESPN fire suit, threw a pass to him," Punch said. "He caught it and the fans went crazy. How good is that."

Bestwick remembers the two elderly gentlemen who used to sit alongside the road near the track entrance wearing deer heads and waving to the fans as they entered.

There is a scene in the movie "Days of Thunder" where Tom Cruise's character Cole Trickle radios in to his team that he wants to pit. But he is told no because the crew is eating ice cream. That was based on something that happened at Pocono, Punch said.

"Harry Hyde was the crew chief for Benny Parsons, who was driving the 25-car for Rick Hendrick," Punch said. "Benny had lost a lap, a caution comes out and he wants to pit. But Harry mumbles that you can't do that right now. When Benny asks why and Harry says they were all eating Fudgsicles. That is a true story. Only at Pocono."

Not all the memories were good ones. There was Bobby Allison's crash in June 1988 that ended his career. A serious crash Dale Earnhardt was involved in July 1982 while he was driving for Bud Moore. Davey Allison's nasty flip on the backstretch in July 1992.

"The finishes were great and the wrecks were unbelievable," Punch said.

And ESPN was there, showing all of them.

Over the years, the network added numerous innovations to its broadcasts, such as in-car cameras and radios, putting cameras on crew members and split screens during commercials. All were done with the idea of taking the fan to places they had never been.

"Our job is to make your experience watching the race as enjoyable as possible while properly documenting the event," Bestwick said.

When all is said and done, though, what Bestwick and Punch are going to miss most are the people around the sport: the drivers, crew chiefs and fans. And they are especially going to miss the people who they work with on a weekly basis and have become like a second family.

"Members of our team have gotten married. Children have graduated, babies have been born, parents have passed away," Bestwick said. "We've shared all that together along with dinners and rides to and from the race track. So the sad part is that you know at the end of the season, through circumstances you can't control, your family is going to break apart a little bit."

Until the last race of the season, however, Punch plans to enjoy it while he can.

"There's a lot of work, a lot of races left between now and Homestead," he said. "Just going to try to focus on the joy, the privilege and the blessing that I have of doing this and being able to do it for so long."

Contact the writer: swalsh@timesshamrock.com

@swalshTT on Twitter