The NYT respects acronyms, but only up to four characters:
Why Nascar, Not NASCAR?
Auto racing fans chafe at our rules on acronyms. Here they are, from our stylebook:
acronyms. An acronym is a word formed from the first letter (or letters) of each word in a series: NATO from North Atlantic Treaty Organization; radar from radio detection and ranging. (Unless pronounced as a word, an abbreviation is not an acronym.) When an acronym serves as a proper name and exceeds four letters, capitalize only the first letter: Unesco; Unicef.
We limit the uppercasing to four letters because longer strings of capitals are distracting and tend to jump off the page.
Or at least, that used to be the rule. I can't find anything newer about their style on their site, but here's a recent article (not published under the Athletic either) that uses "NASCAR":
"That certainly explains it" and it refers to the literal style guide.
Buddy, you don't need to hand it to the top-level comment here. I am giving you permission to disagree with the style while admitting that the comment is bad. Be free.
What happens if there is disagreement about whether something is an acronym or initialism? For example, Europeans usually treat ESA as an acronym and US Americans as an initialism. I just searched the BBC and it is inconsistent, sometimes ESA, sometimes Esa. Perhaps representing their own uncertainty.