Richard Childress is King Of The Mountain

By Mark Young

Well the legal system handed down their ruling last week regarding the AT&T vs. NASCAR court case where they wanted to replace the Cingular logo with AT&T on the #31 RCR car piloted by Jeff Burton.  The court ruled that AT&T could do so regardless of the agreement between NASCAR and Sprint/NEXTEL stating that no new wireless phone companies could sponsor a team.  Many people believe that this could be detrimental to NASCAR while others believe it opens the door for more sponsors to get into the sport.  Regardless of where you stand on the issue this ruling has allowed Richard Childress to keep a high-profile sponsor and continue fielding a highly competitive product for that sponsor.  With that in mind I declare Richard Childress King Of The Mountain.

Now I am sure that Richard would have been able to find another sponsor but the picking is rather thin to find a company willing to invest 20+ million dollars a year that is required to run a team.  Will having AT&T on the #31 car hurt Sprint/NEXTEL?  I doubt it will.  NEXTEL is plastered everywhere you look today when it comes to NASCAR.  Will they lose customers to AT&T?  Perhaps but by and large NEXTEL will still be a dominant force in NASCAR.  Sure they aren't happy with the ruling but they shouldn't be unhappy with NASCAR.  Brian France and NASCAR will continue to convince companies that rather than sponsoring a team they should become the "official ______ supplier of NASCAR.  Unfortunately Brian and his group can't figure out that if they continue to do so they will slowly lose more and more teams who can't find sponsors to keep their businesses on the track.

What this ruling does is open the door for other companies to get involved but were kept away by the monopolization and greed of the sanctioning body.  Perhaps now Robby Gordon will be able to have Motorola on his car rather than an unsponsored one.  Last time I checked, my NEXTEL phone was made by Motorola.

Richard Childress has tried to be diplomatic throughout these proceedings, only supporting my thoughts even more that he should be king, for this week at least.

That's what I think, what say you?