So, how's about a little NASCAR-lawsuit opining for your Monday? Writing in The Nation, Dave Zirin, author of Welcome to the Terrordome: the Pain Politics and Promise of Sports, offers up this slam-draft right at NASCAR Nation:

For the last decade, NASCAR has tried to shed its legacy as a sport indelibly linked to the Confederate flag. Motorsports execs understand that if their sport is ever to go global, burning rubber can't be associated with burning crosses.

However, despite NASCAR's efforts to improve its image, it's still a sport where racism thrives below the surface, and sexism - in the form of bikini-clad NASCAR eye candy proudly paraded around the speedway - is as much a part of the scenery as the Stars and Bars. NASCAR is in danger of being crushed by this contradiction. It's attempting to reach an international audience while displaying the worst kind of backward provincialism.

Hang on, I've got to stuff my Klansman hat back in the closet and put out that burning cross on my lawn before I respond. Okay ... done. Here's the thing with this kind of argument, and this is the hill that NASCAR has to climb: saying NASCAR is racist doesn't make it so. Saying "racism thrives below the surface" without a shred of concrete proof other than allegations and repeated stereotypes is disingenuous at best, a willful smear at worst. [UPDATE: Dave was good enough to respond to this post; click here for his take on the issue.]

Look, we all know that NASCAR has its share of unreconstructed types in the audience. (So does soccer, and hockey, and football, and ...) But to condemn an entire sport based on a targeted, embarrassing few -- and Zirin is by no means the first, last, or only one to do this -- is either willfully stereotypical or agenda-driven. It's an ugly characterization, but it's also the one that persists, as ESPN writer LZ Granderson proved a couple years back when he surveyed a cross-section of Manhattanites and found that every single one associated "NASCAR" with "rednecks" and "racists." (Granderson, it must be noted, is both black and openly gay, and nonetheless treats NASCAR with an even hand; that link is well worth reading.)

I know I'm clouding the issue and misdirecting with this next point, but it has to be said: this kind of behavior is by no means a NASCAR-only issue. Every reporter can tell you dozens of stories of athletes and officials behaving in lawsuit-worthy manners; here's just the most recent of mine. A few months back, I was at an event where an extremely high-profile black athlete was standing next to a white woman seated at a desk. She was looking up at him and laughing at jokes he was making, and he smiled and replied, "You'd better laugh. There's a million white women who'd love to be where you are right now." And no, he wasn't talking about her career position. Should she ever decide to sue the corporations involved in this event, she got a headline-making quote giftwrapped.

Point being, as long as pundits try to slice NASCAR off from the sporting herd, paint it as some kind of random rogue enclave of horny racists, NASCAR is screwed. No, NASCAR shouldn't try to drag everyone down with it; the sport needs to take decisive action on this and future such issues. The NBA has the exact opposite problem, racially speaking, with huge chunks of white America mindlessly writing it off as a black-dominated, thugs-only sport. The reason why the NFL stands supreme is because it's managed to sidestep or effectively deal with the vast majority of these racial issues without allowing them to characterize the entire league.

NASCAR could use a little of that NFL mojo to rehabilitate its fragile image. It could also expect the best behavior out of its people. The drivers manage to behave themselves off the track; why shouldn't everyone else?