'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.

Even in this cynical age, when wild-eyed obsession about political correctness coexists with crude and crass behavior not seen previously in modern civilization, there's a good measure of regard for old-fashioned ethical behavior -- otherwise, no one would be paying any attention to John Force and the outrage of the Pedregon brothers, or to Carl Edwards and his admission that he would "let" a teammate win if it were in the best interests of their team.

There's something about the notion of "fixing" an outcome that is odious to most of us, whether it's an election or a political-favor appointment, a ball game or boxing match. "Team orders" are all about "fixing" the outcome of a motor sports event.

The expression comes from European racing, which has always had a structure more deeply rooted in "teams." American racing, historically, was more about individual competitors.

Europeans, many of whom have always considered themselves much more sophisticated than Americans, accepted the notion of racing teammates helping each other with no more reaction than a shrug of the shoulders for many years.

Americans, meanwhile, railed at such notions. Baseball's reputation still bears the scar of the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal and prizefighting, once immensely popular, has been rendered all but irrelevant because of scandals about "fixed" matches. Wrestling is a niche "sport," appealing mostly to people who merely want to be entertained and don't take the "competition" seriously.

Not that "team orders" were nonexistent in American racing. The practice of "hippodroming," in which drivers would conspire to entertain the fans with staged competition until the final laps, was commonplace in the sport's early days. And there were instances in which drivers blocked for each other, as the late Dale Earnhardt was accused of doing in the race in which he was killed, or wrecking adversaries.

But for the most part, team orders were much like mistresses: We Americans tended to be secretive and even embarrassed about it, while the "sophisticated" Europeans took such behavior in stride.

However, in 2002, the European racing community had a quite American-like reaction when Rubens Barrichello abruptly slowed near the finish and allowed his Ferrari teammate, Michael Schumacher, to pass him and take victory in the Austrian Grand Prix. The uproar grew a few races later, when the two Ferraris finished in a reduced-speed, side-by-side formation and Barrichello was determined to be the winner in the U.S. GP at Indianapolis.

F1, as a consequence, did an about-face from its supposedly sophisticated position and banned team orders. Enforcing that ban is proving to be a challenge, but no longer are team orders accepted by F1's audience as "just a part of the sport." And the basis for their inquiry into last year's Singapore Grand Prix is whether Nelson Piquet deliberately crashed early in the race to set in motion a pit-stop sequence that would allow his Renault teammate, Fernando Alonso, to have a chance to win.

Meanwhile, during the period of its greatest growth in the 1990s, NASCAR was permitting unrestrained expansion of its bigger and wealthier teams, hypocritically ignoring its own rule that no registered team owner could operate more than two cars in any event. Not only did it permit the wink-nod "ownership" of third, fourth and even fifth entries by family members, top-ranking employees and even drivers, NASCAR and a good many of its entourage of media encouraged it with disclaimers couched in a celebration of the NASCAR "family":

"Oh, the 25 is not Rick Hendrick's car. That's Papa Joe's."

"Oh, that's not a Roush car. That one is owned by Geoff Smith."

"Isn't it wonderful that Jeff Gordon is providing a top-flight ride for his protege, Jimmie Johnson?"

Finally, several years ago NASCAR dispensed with the smoke-and-mirrors routine and "limited" entry numbers to four per team. Not only has that all but squeezed out the privateer, it has also given some suggestion of legitimacy to manipulation "for the good of the team." Only in such brazen instances, such as John Force Racing's tactics at Indianapolis or when a driver of the status of Carl Edwards admits he would "throw" a race to benefit a teammate, do we even notice.

How far we have come, indeed, when it wasn't only the Olympics in which playing for pay was seen with skepticism by a good many observers. How far we have come, indeed, from the time when poet-sports writer Grantland Rice penned the lines, "For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks - not that you won or lost - but how you played the Game."

Bottom line: Team orders are un-American, and they stink, no matter how much cologne you may spray on them. NASCAR and the NHRA should follow F1's lead and declare them unacceptable.

None other than the Three Stooges themselves summed it up best in a zany send-up of the motto of Dumas' Three Musketeers:

Moe: "One for all!" Larry: "All for one!"

Curly: "Every man for himself!"

You tell 'em, Curly. Woo-woo-woo-woo!