NASCAR and their lack of thought

First let start off by saying I'm a huge NASCAR fan, and the fact that I disagree with the follow will not cause me to turn around and not watch it. I'm just pointing out the sanctioning bodies stupidity.

Yesterday the federal appeals court has lifted the injunction placed on NASCAR to allow Jeff Burton/Richard Childress sponsor AT&T to use the AT&T logo (I'm not a huge AT&T fan either but that is another rant). The story be found here.

Here is the problem I have with this whole court battle to begin with an owner/driver in NASCAR are considered INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS. They pay dues to become members of NASCAR, and then also pay huge entry fees for each race. In order to build, maintain and enter races the owners have get to Sponsorship to flip the bill (roughly 40 to 85 million a year depending on the team). NASCAR also finds Sponsors in order to flip the bill for the purses and contingency prizes. Some how when Nextel signed on to be the Title Sponsor NASCAR agreed to not allow any other communications company to get involved. That is fine and dandy as that would affect other NASCAR sponsorship i.e. Race sponsorship, and contingency prizes. But this has seemed to have included the race teams as well. Well, OK I'll go for that as the teams that had sponsorship prior to the deal can continue to use those sponsors.

OK so here is the tricky part,, and the whole reason of the court battle. First we will start with Nextel. After they signed the 10 Title sponsorship deal with NASCAR they were purchased by Sprint. We have all seen the commercials now Sprint Nextel right? Well now they are going to change the name of the series title again to the Sprint Cup Series. OK, that works, Sprint bought Nextel and have the right change the name to meet the corporate identity, they paid/are paying for it. Now down on the team level, AT&T purchased Bell South and all of it subsidiaries (Cingular). As any corporation has the right to do (like Sprint) they change the name to meet the standard of the corporate identity including it's logos. Now Sprint and NASCAR are preventing the Corporate Identity Change from Cingular to AT&T. It is the same company that was there before but operating under a different umbrella, just like Nextel (excuse me), Sprint.

So in my ever so humble opinion (which means it doesn't matter anyway) NASCAR needs to pull their head out of the collective asses and allow the teams that race NASCAR get the sponsors who want to pay the money no matter who they are. They are paying the teams to race in the top series in the World. They don't want to sponsor a Bucsh Series car or a truck for that matter, they want to sponsor a cup team because that is what gets them most exposure. I also understand that if it wasn't for NASCAR the exposure would be there in the first place. However, if NASCAR continues down this road of limiting Sponsorship to the teams there wont be any teams to race. They have to keep that in check, there is a lot more they need to open their eyes to as well but again,, that is another rant.