Woes continue for Wood Brothers, Petty Enterprises

Petty Enterprises owner Richard Petty watched the primary sponsor of the famed No. 43 car, General Mills, jump ship for Childress Racing this week. Jamie Squire/Getty Images

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As a sports nation, we have a distinct problem letting go. Just look at the recent collective mourning over Brett Favre. Retirement never comes easy for sports icons, but the way we desire perfection walking out the door can make the process gut-wrenching. Their exit is hurtful but the pain for all parties can be concealed by the joy of winning one final time: like John Elway winning two straight Super Bowls.

So we pull and prod our legends to hang on, desperately refusing to acknowledge age and time. NASCAR does this more than other sports in this regard. With the past champion's provisional, it provides an automatic opportunity for a superstar to make the field who perhaps doesn't deserve to be there on merit. Then, through its much-maligned Top 35 rule, it gives teams who've put their blood, sweat, and tears into the sport for generations an opportunity to earn themselves a guaranteed spot in each race. It's a way to say thanks.

But for two of the sport's legends, such guarantees have proven insufficient. This week, the two-car team of Petty Enterprises -- run by King Richard, the winningest driver the sport has ever known -- lost primary sponsor General Mills for its famed No. 43 next season. The sponsor is moving to a more successful team in Richard Childress Racing, and their championship driver Bobby Labonte is expected to move with it, creating a financial and talent void not easy to fill.

Over at the second Petty Enterprises car, the No. 45, son Kyle labors long past his prime, at 47, a dozen years removed since his last victory. He failed to qualify last week at Martinsville. Youngster Chad McCumbee will step into the car at Texas but qualifying is no guarantee.

Next to them in the garage sits the famed Wood Brothers No. 21, its future a weekly topic of speculation and fear. The team that once dominated the circuit with legend David Pearson in the 1970s is currently struggling just to make races, its driver lineup a conglomeration of aging veterans, shots in the dark and journeyman castaways.

Four Daytona 500 wins were no consolation when the team failed to qualify for the 2008 version this February, the first time since 1962 the famed No. 21 was not in the field. With four DNQs (did not qualify) in six opportunities, the Wood Brothers' sponsors are antsy, and the auction block is not out of the question someday for one of the circuit's most legendary organizations.

For a generation of fans who spent their lives worshipping these racing giants, any type of indication they're about to sink and not swim fills them with anger. They desperately want these organizations to be saved. In a sport where competition, not contribution, causes the final running order, they want special exceptions.

Normal people get old but legends aren't supposed to die off. Unwilling to admit their own mortality, they search elsewhere for blame. It's NASCAR's fault these organizations weren't coddled to the point where failure was not an option. It's their competitor's faults for stealing their ideas and their talent. Surely, the superstars themselves could never be responsible.

But reality is cold, not comforting. These teams have been going downhill for far too long to blame anyone else. The truth is both organizations put themselves in the hole they're in today.

The Wood Brothers have been a one-car team virtually their whole life, refusing to adapt to the changing times of multi-car behemoths. Their race shop, for far too long, stayed buried in the heart of Virginia, away from the burgeoning NASCAR mecca of Charlotte, where the best crew members, engineers and technology have risen.

The drivers for the program haven't been second-rate: Elliott Sadler, Ricky Rudd, Bill Elliott and Ken Schrader are among those who've driven for the No. 21 this decade. Among them, they have a championship, two Brickyard 400 wins and decades of unparalleled success -- but for some reason, even their contribution couldn't make the difference.

And so it goes for the Pettys too. The similarities are striking: keeping their race shop away from Charlotte, refusing to jump on the engineering bandwagon and naively believing old ways could ultimately prove triumphant over new tricks. General Mills can't be faulted for leaving a team that hasn't delivered a win for it in nine years of sponsorship. The last time the No. 43 visited Victory Circle was when STP was on the quarterpanels in 1999.

Over that last decade, the organization has tried its hardest to compete: it brought old friend and Hendrick Motorsports championship crew chief Robbie Loomis back into the fold, hired a former Cup champion in Labonte and created an engineering relationship with Gillett Evernham Motorsports. But the lack of success has piled up over time, leading to a gradual monetary deficit on the sponsorship front that only the Petty name has kept from growing at an unstoppable rate.

Both teams are certainly not dead yet. An investment group hopes to inject some much-needed funding into the Petty camp, and the Wood Brothers have Ford Motor Company bending over backwards for them to get their program kick-started. But it's naive to think money is a fix-all. The competition left these men behind long ago and the chances of catching up after a decade of despair is a longshot. This is 2008, not 1978, and no amount of hand-me-downs will stop time from moving forward and the cycle of new-school superstars from progressing.

Life goes on and even the most legendary of men have their day of reckoning, no matter how much our imaginations get the best of us.