Burton victory would have been priceless

The most astounding moment in modern sports history was in sight over the weekend. A NASCAR driver could have won a race, gone to Victory Lane and said . . .

Nothing?

Not exactly nothing. But if Jeff Burton had won at Bristol he might not have done what drivers have been so finely tuned to do.

"I'd like to thank Duracell, Featherlite and Oral B for giving the No. 31 AT&T Chevrolet and our outstanding Old Spice team and my Motel 6 crew chief a great run tonight in the Sharpie 500."

Jeff Burton's main sponsor is AT&T, which is in a dispute with NASCAR over sponsorship rights.

The quickie legal brief: Sprint is NASCAR's big-daddy sponsor. Jeff Burton's car was sponsored by Cingular, which AT&T absorbed. Sprint wants no trace of AT&T anywhere on Earth, but it will settle for no traces at NASCAR tracks.

Lawyers swooped in. Court rulings are flying. The next stop could be the Supreme Court.

In the interim, fans at Bristol spotted something rarer than an ivory-billed woodpecker_a race car without a logo on the hood.

When the green flag dropped, Jeff Burton's hood endorsed only red paint. In related news, The Weather Channel reported that at 8:14 EDT Saturday night hell froze over.

Jeff Burton finished 12th, darn it. A win might have answered the question physicists have been grappling with for decades.

If a NASCAR driver wins and doesn't reflexively thank a dozen sponsors in the first 23 seconds, did the race really occur?

Not that there's anything wrong with keeping sponsors happy. If AT&T paid me a couple of million bucks a year I'd shout my thanks into every microphone I could find. And any sports fan hopelessly annoyed by corporate name pollution moved to the Unabomber's abandoned shack years ago.

Sports is a business and sponsorships are huge money. NASCAR has always been ahead of that game, and it has raised gratitude to an art form.

Have you ever heard the Super Bowl MVP get his trophy and say, "I'd like to thank the Anheuser-Busch/Burger King No. 18 Under Armour jersey for giving me the strength to win this award"?

No, he usually falls back on thanking God, family, country, teammates and may try to work in a plug for his shoe company.

If Lou Gehrig had been a NASCAR driver, his farewell speech would have echoed, "Today(today, today) I feel like a Lucky Strike smoke on the face of the Earthlink.com."

It's ingrained in NASCAR lingo because no sport engenders such brand loyalty. If Victoria's Secret became Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s sponsor next year, thousands of guys would show up at Daytona wearing Miracle Bras.

This leads to every week's silliest sports moment, where the winner hops out and runs down the list of sponsors while switching logo caps every three seconds for photographs.

It's such a running joke that NASCAR cooperated with the makers of "Talladega Nights." Ricky Bobby was such a shill he was contractually bound to mention Powerade every time he said a prayer. He had a sticker as wide as his windshield.

"This sticker is dangerous and inconvenient," Ricky said. "But I do love Fig Newtons."

And no doubt, Jeff Burton loves AT&T. But drivers are human, too. A few must secretly roll their eyes as they turn into corporate carnival barkers after a win.

If only Jeff Burton had done it Saturday, a driver at last could have been free to say what's really on his mind.

"I'd like thank God for not making me thank anyone tonight."

See more at www.columbustelegram.com