By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
May 10, 2007
The Boston Red Sox once sold Babe Ruth so its owner
could fund a play. The Portland Trail Blazers once
passed on Michael Jordan. The Minnesota Vikings once
traded five players and six draft picks for Herschel
Walker.
None of those moves were as disastrously bad as the
one Teresa Earnhardt made when she thought she could
call Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s bluff about leaving his late
father's racing team.
Her stepson was serious. Painfully so for DEI.
Thursday at his JR Motorsports headquarters in North
Carolina, Earnhardt Jr. announced he is leaving DEI.
Whether he is going to drive for his own team or will
join an existing competitor is not certain.
What is known is that he'll still be sponsored by
Budweiser, still will drive a Chevy and, of course,
still be the overwhelmingly most popular and
recognizable driver in NASCAR.
Only now, he'll be doing it for even more money and
even more (if not total) control.
Junior had asked for a majority stake of DEI to stay.
No one yet knows how negotiations between Junior and
Teresa broke down – maybe Teresa really did all she
could, but it doesn't seem like she was willing to
give Junior the 51 percent control he wanted. Now she
has 100 percent of a company in ruin.
Financially, the best move for Junior would be to
expand his JR Motorsports, currently a Busch Series
operation, to Nextel Cup, where he and current
teammate Martin Truex could form a two-car team. With
engine and technical support from Hendrick
Motorsports, winners of seven of the season's 10
races, it could be a formidable team from Daytona on.
Most importantly, it would allow Junior to control the
outrageous revenue he brings in, cashing in on the
popularity that made him bigger than DEI, even if DEI
couldn't realize it.
Since his father's on-track death in 2001, Earnhardt
Jr., now 32, has become the driving force in all of
NASCAR. He has what, half the fans? Sixty percent?
Seventy? Any track, any weekend is a home game for
Junior, as a sea of red-clad worshippers make him more
beloved than his nearest competitors – the likes of
Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon – combined.
When Junior takes the lead the place goes nuts. When
someone bumps him into a wreck, they'll be met,
eventually, with a hail of boos and beer cans from the
grandstands.
There essentially is nothing else like it in sports.
Only Tiger Woods controls golf in the same manner –
assuring crowds, television ratings and revenue. But
Woods doesn't play every week, and culturally golf and
NASCAR fans are little alike.
Even so, you wouldn't see Nike Golf let Tiger walk
under almost any circumstances. You wouldn't see Nike
co-founder Phil Knight assume he could just rebuild
the division with someone else. Nike knows Tiger is
the golf division.
That Teresa Earnhardt didn't see the same in her
stepson is stunning. Maybe she really never does show
up at the track? Maybe she really never talks to
Junior and still thinks he was some silly,
hard-partying kid who didn't know the difference
between tens of millions and hundreds of millions?
Whatever it was, it was a colossal miscalculation.
If both Junior and Truex leave (Truex's future is
unknown), DEI's Nextel Cup driver stable would consist
of rookie Paul Menard and, uh, yeah, that's it.
It will still have the Intimidator' s likeness to sell
– a considerable cash stream. And Jeffrey Earnhardt –
Senior's grandson and Junior's nephew – is under
contract, but he's 17 and several years away, if ever.
But other than that, it's a leveling of the company.
By not sharing more with Junior, Teresa wound up with
all of nothing.
Meanwhile, if Junior keeps this in-house at JR
Motorsports (where his sister Kelley is president) he
officially can begin to print money. His new operation
will select its marketing partners from a crush of
Fortune 500 companies.
In terms of merchandise sales, this could be historic;
the most popular driver with a new car and number.
Many fans hope Richard Childress Racing would
surrender the rights to Senior's No. 3 and allow
Junior to run it himself, but no matter the number,
there are millions of Junior fans now in the market
for new T-shirts, bumper stickers, key chains, flag,
tattoos and heaven knows what else. The No. 8 is
obsolete.
It's like the New York Yankees changing colors. Only
with more fans who are more loyal.
If Junior is as smart as he has demonstrated recently,
he'd invest some of that revenue into a great CEO for
JR Motorsports.
And that is, perhaps, why just joining an existing
team, albeit with a hefty compensation or partial
ownership deal, would be the better choice. The
demands of being an owner-driver can become too big.
It's a double responsibility that has proven extremely
challenging for Michael Waltrip and Robby Gordon.
Earnhardt needs to concentrate mostly on driving.
Of course, it's not like he's been tearing up the
track. The most remarkable thing about his popularity
is that it is not – like Tiger Woods' – based on
dominating the competition.
Junior never has won a Cup title, hasn't won a race in
a year and has taken checkers just twice since 2004.
Yet he has the most fans.
The on-track results had to factor into his decision
to walk. It's not like DEI was giving him the best car
each week to begin with. If they weren't going to meet
his business demands either, what was the point?
But for whatever reason, Teresa Earnhardt figured he
wouldn't leave his daddy's company. Maybe she underbid
him. Maybe she refused to give up control. Maybe she
banked on a family discount.
Whatever it was, she guessed wrong. Terribly so. The
good news for DEI is it only took the Red Sox 86 years
to recover from something so dumb.
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist. Send
Dan a question or comment for potential use in a
future column or webcast.