Hendrick adding Kahne waters down NASCAR
Way back in 1984, it would have been absurd to think Rick Hendrick would be in a position to hire any driver he wanted. He was a fledgling car owner, barely surviving when Geoffrey Bodine won at Martinsville – a win that essentially saved him from shutting down his operation.
In the 26 years since, it's been a whole lot of roses – 191 wins, nine Cup championships and a stable stacked with enough star power to make the Sultan of Brunei jealous, if NASCAR were his thing. So you have to give Hendrick credit for building something out of nothing. Dynasties just don't appear out of thin air; they're built from the ground up, and Hendrick has the dirty knees to prove it.
That said, while adding Kasey Kahne to his already ridiculous stable is great for Hendrick, it's not for NASCAR.
Kahne, the biggest free agent out there, is definitely leaving Richard Petty Motorsports at the end of 2010, reportedly to join Hendrick Motorsports. Exactly when and where he starts his new gig is still unknown – the most likely scenario has Kahne driving for the Hendrick affiliated Stewart-Haas in 2011 before taking over HMS's No. 5 ride in 2012 – but it is a certainty that at some point, Kahne will call Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. his teammates.
That Kahne chose to sign with Hendrick is hardly surprising. You don't turn down the keys to a Corvette, especially when you've been driving a Fiero.
For six years, Kahne's talent has been bottled up while his bosses' primary focus was on staying out of the red. This is why signing with Hendrick is a move Kahne had to make. To this point, he's had to wonder if he'd ever get the opportunity to test his full potential. With Hendrick, he will.
The disturbing part for NASCAR isn't just that Rick Hendrick has added another stud in his garage. It's that there's a perception (based on reality) that if you're a free agent with solid credentials, there's only one place to go. Consider this: In the past three years, Hendrick has lured the sport's biggest star (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) away from his dad's own company, talked a Hall of Famer out of retirement (Mark Martin) and enticed Tony Stewart away from Joe Gibbs Racing.
Now, with the addition of Kahne, Hendrick's arsenal includes the No. 1 (Earnhardt Jr.), No. 2 (Stewart), No. 3 (Johnson), No. 4 (Jeff Gordon), No. 7 (Kahne) and No. 8 (Martin) drivers in terms of merchandise sales on the NASCAR.com SuperStore. In other words, six of the sport's eight most popular drivers could potentially be on the same team in 2011.
While this might seem like an innocuous statistic, it's not for a sport that makes its living on being a high-speed soap opera. NASCAR's boom in the 1990s was in large part the result of a perceived rivalry between Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Gordon. While they were friendly off the track, their fans weren't, and the result was a riled up fan base that couldn't get enough of rooting for theirs and rooting against yours. So infected were fans by the rivalry, it became contagious, hence the sport's rise.
But imagine if Earnhardt Sr. and Gordon were teammates – friends shaking the other's hand in victory lane and congratulating him when he won another title. What would you be left with?
I'll tell ya what you'd have – Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, a championship "battle" that's no different than a Little League banquet where everyone gets a trophy. In this case, I mean this literally, because Gordon actually owns Johnson's car.
Like it or not, conflict is a draw and it keeps drawing until things are resolved. With Earnhardt Sr. and Gordon, things were never resolved, so fans kept tuning in, because it mattered who came out on top.
With Johnson battling Martin and Gordon down the stretch two of the past three seasons, who won hasn't mattered as much, mostly because they were preaching the "we win no matter what" mantra weeks before things were actually settled.
The silver lining for those who aren't happy with the status quo, e.g., Johnson winning year after year, is that maybe Kahne will end his reign. However, even that would provide only partial consolation, because in the end, Johnson would still be a part of the scene, there celebrating his team's achievement.
Why is this bad?
Because a sport monopolized by one team leaves little room for the competition. And a sport with no competition is no sport at all.
