By Any Other Name...

There's a lot in a name. When that name is part of a legacy, it opens doors, doors that may not only have been locked, but concealed altogether. We experience it in business, in academics, and of course, in sports. In Super Freakonomics, it was reported that the single biggest factor determining kids who succeeded in becoming Major League Baseball players was having a father who also played in the majors.

Such is the case in motorsports, too. A talented stock car driver faces three limitations: talent, sponsorship, and opportunity. Given enough talent, enough funding, and a ride at the right level, the sky is the limit. But for a kid whose father is already in the sport, especially if that father has had any measure of success, those opportunities tend to come along more readily. A kid racing weekly at Lee USA Speedway, forty-five minutes from my apartment, is not going to be noticed by the big teams down south. He will have to seek out touring-series rides and sponsors to make the jump to the big leagues. By comparison, Chase Elliott is fifteen years old and has a development contract with Hendrick Motorsports, including a ride in the K&N Pro East Series (which, coincidentally, lowered its minimum age to 15 this year). Chase, of course, is the son of a guy named Bill Elliott who has a Winston Cup title and a few wins under his belt.

And so it is in NASCAR, where the surest way to get a big-league ride is to have a grandfather or a father or a brother who had a big-league ride, and had some degree of success. In the early days of the sport, drivers like Richard Petty and Buddy Baker got their first opportunities driving their fathers' hand-me-down cars, proving their talents in the big leagues before rising to national prominence. Later on, a wave of second-generation drivers swept the sport. Some, like Davey Allison and Dale Jarrett, carried on their fathers' winning traditions in the big leagues; others, like Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace, were known for their fathers' success at the local level and dared to dream larger. Of course, having a fast father is no guarantee of success; Rusty's brothers Mike and Kenny never won in Winston Cup, and Rusty's son Steve remains winless after four full seasons in the Nationwide Series.

Perhaps the hardest act to follow, though, is being an Earnhardt. Richard Petty may have more wins than Dale, but Richard's success came in a different era. Petty Enterprises brought superior cars to every race; few teams could afford to keep pace. That's not to suggest Richard Petty lacked talent; he just had the advantage of superior equipment, too. Moreover, most of Richard's success took place off the TV camera. Many fans probably visually remember only two of Richard's wins; one is the 1984 Firecracker 400, and the other is the 1979 Daytona 500, where Richard got very little TV time while Cale Yarborough kept hitting Bobby Allison's fists with his helmet on the backstretch.

Dale Earnhardt, by comparison, was from a different, more competitive era. He had great equipment, but so did Tim Richmond, Rusty Wallace, Davey Allison and Jeff Gordon. Earnhardt knew the limits of his car, and how far he could push the limit before he was out of control. When in control, he was aggressive and tenacious. Ten years after his passing, fans still remember Earnhardt wrecking Terry Labonte at Bristol in 1995 and 1999, or Dale driving from eighteenth to the lead with five laps left at Talladega in 2000, or the famed and incorrectly-named "Pass In The Grass" at The Winston in 1987. Earnhardt took no prisoners and made no apologies.

Despite their successes, the Petty name doesn't carry the same expectation as the Earnhardt name. Kyle Petty's career was but a shadow of his father's, yet he only got some commentary that he was too unfocused to succeed in stock cars. But the Petty name had also become less potent after Richard's retirement, with the #43 only showing flashes of brilliance afterwards. After Adam Petty's tragic death in 2000, the Petty name was just a relic of the past, and narrowly escaped being wiped off the circuit altogether after last season.

By contrast, the Earnhardt name remains strong. Ralph Earnhardt was a force behind the wheel. Dale Earnhardt was a legend behind the wheel. Dale Earnhardt, Inc. was a championship race team with a winning record. Even Dale Earnhardt, Jr., for all the criticism he shoulders, has his share of Busch Series championships and Winston Cup victories, despite the fact that being Dale Earnhardt's son is an impossible act to follow. Dale's other son, Kerry, was not as successful, but prior to Dale's death, he had racked up a fair number of ARCA wins, opening the door to what would be a long list of second-rate rides before he announced his retirement in 2007.

It would be unthinkable to imagine an Earnhardt making the headlines for anything but winning.

And then, there's Jeffrey Earnhardt.

The younger of Kerry's two sons, Jeffrey made his NASCAR touring debut in a family-owned car, driving in the Busch East Series for DEI in 2007 and finishing fifth in points. The next year, he was teamed with Trevor Bayne and Jesus Hernandez as part of a three-car DEI program. Despite similar results, he was pulled from the car two races from the end of the season. Rumors flew that Jeffrey had been benched because his father Kerry, now working as a consultant for DEI, felt he was focused too much on his extracurricular life and too little on working on the car.

Jeffrey made a few Nationwide starts in 2009, then ran a few Truck Series races last year for Rick Ware Racing. During the offseason, Jeffrey was announced as the fulltime driver of RWR's #1 Truck team, with sponsorship from longtime RWR sponsor Fuel Doctor. The team survived the Daytona carnage to open the season with a top-ten finish, putting Jeffrey third in points leaving Daytona. Two top-twenty finishes have left Jeffrey in tenth in points early in the year, far ahead of expected contenders like Brendan Gaughan and Travis Kvapil.

Then, this Tuesday, RWR announced that Earnhardt would not be in the #1 Truck at Martinsville this weekend. The reason? Apparently, teams had reported to owner Rick Ware that Jeffrey and his agent were shopping around for a new ride, discussing bringing along Ware's Fuel Doctor sponsorship. Jeffrey, presumably through his agent, denied the charges, claiming that he had been told the team could no longer run Jeffrey in the #1 without sponsorship, hence he was looking for a new and stable ride.

I admit, I sort of saw it coming. Last year, Fuel Doctor sponsored Ware's #47 truck with Brett Butler behind the wheel. Butler lost the ride mid-season, after being rotated to a second truck, due to "lack of sponsorship." Seeing as Fuel Doctor remained on the truck through the season (and for Jeffrey Earnhardt's starts), I wondered what sort of sponsor RWR was dealing with. Fuel Doctor had also announced sponsorship of Timmy Hill's rookie efforts in an RWR-owned Nationwide car this season. All told, it sounded like RWR was trying to stretch a sponsor dollar between teams, expecting drivers to bring along additional money to secure the ride. And if the RWR truck team needed Jeffrey to bring his own sponsor portfolio along, I could see him losing the ride once the funding fell short.

But at the same time, if the allegations were true and Jeffrey were shopping the sponsorship around to a new team, one has to wonder what sort of agent would think it were a good idea to start with. Especially with the past rumors regarding Jeffrey's work ethic, this seems like a good way to burn a lot of bridges before ever crossing them. That's just basic business.

And never mind that...where else would he go? There are no competitive Truck teams with an open seat, and the only ones with an opening are demanding sponsor dollars, lest they be reduced to start-and-parking. Former series champion Mike Skinner had difficulty landing a ride before the season started; how would Jeffrey Earnhardt fare with no real credentials to flaunt but his name? Not to suggest that RWR is a top team, but at this point in the year, Jeffrey has completed all but two laps and sits ahead of a number of veteran drivers struggling through bad luck. A ride with potential beats a ride that doesn't yet exist.

Interestingly, RWR and Jeffrey released a press briefing Wednesday evening that they have settled their differences, and Earnhardt will drive the RWR truck at Martinsville and beyond while they search for additional sponsorship. Only time will tell how long this will last; scars like that have a way of lingering, and if a better driver became available, I wouldn't be surprised to see Jeffrey on the free-agent list within a couple months.

But then, you have to step back and wonder, if Jeffrey Earnhardt were Jeffrey Key (keep in mind that Kerry only changed his name back to Earnhardt a few years before his father's death) - or if he were a driver by any other name - would he have kept the ride after Tuesday's debacle? Would he have had a shot at the ride at all?