Tension high after merger

Despite the rumors floating a month ago, Chip Ganassi claimed his team was never going to merge with anyone. Getty Images Tom Bowles's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Tom. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

About a month ago, I checked in with Chip Ganassi and asked him if the stock car rumors were true: would his two-car organization be merging with another team? At the time, sources claimed he and George Gillett -- not DEI -- were planning to form a four-car superpower of their own. When I shot from the hip, I expected one of the most powerful men in motorsports to politely dodge the question. Instead, the car owner shot right back: Ganassi was so sure his team wasn't going to merge with anyone, he claimed, that if they ever did I had the right to punch him in the face the next time I saw him walking around the garage.

Lucky for him I don't own a set of boxing gloves.

Wednesday's announcement that Chip Ganassi and Dale Earnhardt, Inc. are joining forces is as much about economic reality as it is about star power. In Ganassi, you've got an IRL championship car owner who still has the passion and desire to take his title-winning formula and apply it into the NASCAR ranks. Despite going 0-for-5 in landing cars in the Chase, Ganassi brings a world's worth of potential in Juan Pablo Montoya to the bargaining table.

Meanwhile, the mere mention of the name Earnhardt brings the marketing muscle reserved only for a team started by a seven-time Sprint Cup champ. And though Dale Sr. has been dead seven years while Dale Jr. left the organization at the end of '07, Teresa Earnhardt can still link the family name to a sponsor in the same way only Petty Enterprises can. With multi-million dollar merchandise and licensing deals linked to Teresa's former husband, there's a host of extra reasons companies should be willing to jump on board.

But they're not, and the fact these owners were backed into a corner tells you how bad the current economic conditions are. While detractors will tell you their cars have underachieved, the track record for either team really isn't all that bad. Both teams have won a race within the last two seasons, with each anchored by an up-and-coming star (Montoya and Martin Truex, Jr., respectively). They even both have a powerbroker sponsorship still sitting in their right-side pocket (Ganassi/Target, Earnhardt/Bass Pro Shops).

Yet even with an "A" team with the money to compete, the bottom line is both sides felt the only way to match up against the superteams was simple: become one themselves. And if the only way both organizations could survive is by pooling their resources, what does that say about the dozen or so one- and two-car teams struggling to survive in this market?

The answer isn't pretty. Ganassi and Earnhardt set an ugly standard, equating a dropdown to a two-car team as the equivalent of dying a slow death. If anything, that'll only accelerate the ridiculous arms race for everyone trying to own four cars.

And after two years of consolidation, that race is suddenly nearing an ominous checkered flag. This merger now means 32 teams are under the umbrella of just nine NASCAR organizations. While Roush Fenway Racing keeps its five-car team for one more season, the DEI/Ganassi partnership joins Richard Childress Racing and Hendrick Motorsports as teams right at the four-car limit NASCAR plans to implement after 2009. With Roger Penske, Robert Yates Racing, Gillett Evernham Motorsports, Michael Waltrip Racing, and Joe Gibbs Racing at three cars apiece next year, the trend of the sport is crystal clear: bigger isn't just better, it's necessary for future survival.

When you look at the teams outside that equation, the death march may soon be underway. Team Red Bull and Stewart-Haas Racing have enough sponsorship to survive as two car entities, but both have long-term plans of expansion they feel they'll need to compete with the Big Boys (not to mention Stewart-Haas' Hendrick support). That leaves -- you guessed it -- 11 organizations that, a few years from now, could be capable of filling a 43-car field themselves.

The other nine full-time teams left are the ones that have garage folk buzzing about "Black Monday," rumored to come the day after this Sunday's season finale. Up to 1,000 garage employees could be handed the pink slip. After all, each of the small teams remaining has its survival in question, with minimal or not enough sponsorship available to complete a full schedule as of right now.

Furniture Row Racing, Robby Gordon Motorsports, the Wood Brothers, Bill Davis Racing, Hall of Fame Racing, and two-car Petty Enterprises. Any or all are in danger of folding before the Daytona 500 -- and that leaves nowhere to go for men and women who've given their life to the sport. Already, we've seen 110 people laid off as the DEI/Ganassi merger will drop two teams off the radar; can you imagine the carnage if eight, nine, even 10 more cars join them?

In the past, during times of economic crisis, new owners would line up in droves to fill the spots left behind by these cars. It's the whole concept of free enterprise, right? The problem now is there's not enough startup capital out there for people to buy these teams in peril.

It used to be that someone could come with a car and a dream and slowly build up their operation to be competitive. But now? You need a two-car team at minimum -- if not three -- to come out of the box with a fighting chance. The revenue stream for such a large operation is $50 million -- and who's lying around with that type of cash to pour into Cup in a heartbeat? More than likely, the only way we're going to see new owners enter the sport at this point is if they "attach" themselves to another team for chassis and engine support, similar to the way Yates Racing currently attaches itself to Roush in everything but name only.

That type of superteam climate that makes you wonder whether NASCAR can fill its fields in 2009. And if they do fall short, the best thing that could happen is for the owners to get together and figure out some way to cut costs and level out the playing field. NASCAR CEO Brian France certainly isn't going to do it, saying in two press conferences over the past few days he's not going to randomly extend lines of credit to teams in peril. So, the only way to give these smaller teams a fighting chance is for the big time owners to agree to step it down a notch.

An owner referendum is long overdue when you consider Major League Baseball, the NFL, all the "big time" sports have their owners get together in the offseason to discuss ways to make their sport better. It used to be such a meeting would take up a giant lecture hall for NASCAR; but with about a dozen men, if that, left at the bargaining table, there's an opportunity here for everyone to come together in a small conference room and force some real solutions.

Of course, these owners could also keep on trying to outspend one another like crazy. But how long can that really go on? Even Hendrick Motorsports announced layoffs of a dozen employees last week, including Jimmie Johnson's championship spotter Stevie Reeves. If Teresa Earnhardt and Chip Ganassi are capable of falling apart, even the most successful of teams has got to be asking a simple question: Am I next?