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No JR Motorsports ride for me, either

By DAVID GREEN

This just in, from home offices in North Carolina and Kentucky: My people have not spoken to Dale Jr.'s people -- no phone calls, no text messages, no tweets -- and at this point in time, I have no plans to race at Daytona in February.

That puts me squarely within a group including several million other folks -- including Danica Patrick.

Stop the presses!

Am I the only one who's way past tired of the obsession with Danica (not) coming to NASCAR?

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Bad times, bad racing, or flawed perceptions?

By DAVID GREEN

One of the hardest questions to answer these days would have to be: What is the state of the sport of auto racing?

Fan dissatisfaction is a recurrent theme. The quality of competition is constantly under scrutiny. The sagging economy is a pervasive issue.

And, as I have suggested in this space before, there's not a whole lot of confidence in the leaders of major-league auto racing. Brian France is the butt of every NASCAR joke. Tony George never got as much respect as fellow Hoosier Dan Quayle. In Formula One, the antagonistic Max Mosley is gone, but the selection of Jean Todt as his successor represents anything but a regime change.

So, how much of it is real, valid gloom and doom and how much, as NASCAR's Tony Stewart recently suggested, is perception?

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Bodine smartly opts for discretion

By DAVID GREEN

As we so often must, let us credit William Shakespeare for originating an expression which is apropos on this eve of another Talladega race.

"The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life."

The line was delivered by Falstaff -- a character in the play "Henry IV," not to be confused with the beer brand the late Dizzy Dean used to hawk on his CBS baseball broadcasts. A knight with a penchant for boasting, Falstaff had pretended to be dead to avoid being killed during a conflict. His line explained the rationale for what might have seemed cowardly.

The lesson was not lost on Todd Bodine. The youngest of the three racing Bodine brothers from Chemung, N.Y., made one of the more intelligent decisions in awhile on the final lap of Saturday's Truck Series race at Talladega.

The decision? Don't try to block Kyle Busch.

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Observations at random

By DAVID GREEN

Observations on the eve of Race No. 6 in the 10-race Chase to the Cup:

ITEM: Wonder what the real reaction (not the public-consumption one) will be from NASCAR if Jimmie Johnson clinches the 2009 title with two or three races left in the Chase? After all, that's what the Chase was supposed to prevent.

Is such a thing likely to occur? No. But neither is it impossible. ...

ITEM: Jeremy Mayfield goes "Outside The Lines" at 9 a.m. EDT Sunday in an ESPN interview. Previews of the conversation with ESPN's Steve Delsohn indicate that Mayfield continues to maintain his innocence regarding drug use, and states that he's being used as a sacrificial lamb to scare star drivers who, according to Mayfield, use drugs such as marijuana and cocaine.

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Hall of Fame picks

By DAVID GREEN

Fifty people much better qualified than I will make the official decision later today, but for what it's worth, here are my five selections for the inaugural class of inductees into the NASCAR Hall of Fame:

"Big Bill" France, Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Junior Johnson and Curtis Turner.

It would be pretty hard to go wrong in picking any five from the list of 25 finalists, and equally difficult to choose a lineup that would please everybody. But those are my picks.

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This is ridiculous...almost

By DAVID GREEN

The late Bill Connell, long-time public address announcer at Charlotte Motor Speedway, could never have been accused of understating anything. In the manner of an old-style carnival barker (or a present-day Dick Vitale), he did his best to make the mundane seem astonishing.

He ignored the notion that close counts only in horseshoes and hand grenades. If a driver ventured into the high line at CMS on a qualifying run, Bill would hype the moment by screeching, "HE'S IN THE WALL..." and then, when there was no crash, he would add, "...almost!!!"

I thought of Bill as I pondered NASCAR's warning to Hendrick Motorsports that the cars of Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin were being closely scrutinized to make sure they were legal after the Dover and Kansas races.

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Cowboys Stadium: It's Bruton-like

By DAVID GREEN

Two thoughts came to mind as I watched the Dallas Cowboys play the past two weekends in team owner Jerry Jones' new stadium in Arlington, Texas.

1: The size and lavishness of this place defies belief, even as viewed on television.

2: Don't you know Bruton Smith wants an oval racing facility just like it, complete with retractable roof?

I mean, there are big facilities and fancy facilities and there are big and fancy facilities, but they all look like a small-town sandlot ball field in comparison. It's like the Titanic compared to an Ohio River tugboat. Nothing wrong with the sandlot diamond or the diesel-snorting tug, but, come on. This thing has a high-definition television complex suspended from its roof that weighs more than Lambeau Field, six inches of turf and two rows of the parking lot included.

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Juan Pablo's complaint, and other musings

By DAVID GREEN

Ironic, isn't it, that little ABC Sports featurette with Juan Pablo Montoya praising Mark Martin for helping him get competitive in Cup cars, and then suggesting that Martin "screwed me" after the finish of the Sylvania 300 Sunday.

You'd think Martin threw a cinder block out the window of his car in front of Montoya's, the way the Colombian has pouted about that incident.

I give Montoya credit for not causing a wreck. But he didn't refrain from roughing up the leader out of the goodness of his heart; he was surprised.

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Say it ain't so, Renault

By DAVID GREEN

In October 1919, one of the world's first modern sports -- baseball, already 43 years old if you count the origin of today's National League as a starting point, even older if you date from the establishment of the first fully professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, in 1869 -- suffered a scandal of historic proportions when the Chicago White Sox of the American League were accused of deliberately losing the World Series to Cincinnati.

It took nearly a year for the rumors of skullduggery to result in any sort of consequence.

Fast-forward to today, almost 100 years after the baseball scandal, when another modern sport -- automobile racing -- is embroiled in a scandal that gnaws at the legitimacy of its purpose.

The scandal is in Formula One, but American race fans, most of them attuned to NASCAR stock car racing, should take notice, because the entire sport is smeared by the actions of an F1 team in one of last year's races.

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'Team' concept out of control

By DAVID GREEN

Thanks to all who posted responses to my most recent item, but the "team orders" issue has taken on a life of itself and, I believe, deserves revisiting.

The point of my original post was to stimulate debate about efforts to correct mistakes, and focused on the FIA's investigation into the nearly year-old outcome of a Formula One race. I alluded to instant reply to evaluate the calls of referees and umpires and used the NCAA as an example of what I believe to be overzealous "correcting" of results from the recent and even not-so-recent past.

Just days before that item was posted, the NHRA had a scandalous incident at its most tradition-filled and revered event, the U.S. Nationals, involving one of its most famous and popular drivers. I skipped over that development, largely because (as far as I know) the NHRA is not attempting to "get it right" in the matter of whether John Force deliberately "threw" a race.

But clearly, "team orders" has become an issue that NASCAR and the NHRA ought to address, as F1 did some seven years ago.

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