CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Young guys vs. old guys. Same as it ever was.
When the 2018 NASCAR Media Tour started, no one had a clue what topic would emerge to dominate the annual handful of days stock car racing sets aside to do some talking and writing and more talking and then more writing. In years past, the theme has been an easy guess. But this year there was no kickoff news conference from NASCAR itself. There was no big change to the postseason format (thank heavens), no series title sponsorship announcement, no nothing. No touchstone. No lightning rod. No instant talking point that the sport could ride until it rolls into Daytona next month.
Then Kyle Busch handed everyone a NASCAR argument that has never gone away, but somehow has never gotten old, even as the drivers debating it have.
Young guys vs. old guys.
On Tuesday, Busch, now 32, was asked about the sport's perceived push to promote its young up-and-comers, easily the largest group of youthful talent to show up all at once in NASCAR's 70-year history. When the green flag flies over the Great American Race, the field is guaranteed to contain a half-dozen full-time Cup series drivers under the age of 25, all driving extremely high-profile machines. Darrell Wallace Jr., Erik Jones, Ryan Blaney, William Byron, Alex Bowman and Chase Elliott will be piloting cars fielded by Richard Petty, Joe Gibbs, Roger Penske and Rick Hendrick.
These kids, they host podcasts, they do social media takeovers and they make cameos in Hollywood blockbusters, steered toward those opportunities largely by NASCAR itself.
Busch wasn't thrilled.
"All you're doing is advertising all these younger guys for fans to figure out and pick up on and choose as their favorite driver ... I think it's stupid. I don't know; I'm not the marketing genius that's behind this deal."
Nor was he the genius behind the following deals ...
In 2005, he arrived much-ballyhooed into the Cup series, some of that because his big brother had just won the championship, but a lot of it earned on his own. He'd rewritten NASCAR's minimum age rules as a teenager in the truck series. He'd won rookie of the year in Xfinity (then Busch) Series and taken his place alongside Jeff Gordon, Terry Labonte and fellow youngster Brian Vickers at Hendrick Motorsports. When he won at Lowe's Motor Speedway in a Lowe's-backed car, his image was splashed all over the Charlotte area on billboards to promote the track's events. And in 2006, when A&E launched a TV series about the future superstars of racing, Busch not only had his own episode of the show, he was featured on the promotional posters and DVD cover.
This show dropped right in the middle of a time when the Gillette Young Guns, a group of younger drivers, were the centerpiece of a massive multiyear ad campaign. Eventually Busch was part of that roster. Remember "Countdown to E Day," which marched us up to Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Cup series debut? That was 20 years ago. At that same time, the covers of every publication from ESPN The Magazine to TV Guide featured newly arrived racers.
The point is, this is not new. It's as old as the Circle of Life, even if that circle is shaped like a 1.5-mile tri-oval.
NASCAR's pioneers didn't much like being encroached upon by young whippersnappers Richard Petty and David Pearson. Pearson and Petty weren't huge fans of losing sections of the grandstands to Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace. Rusty and Dale weren't super thrilled with losing TV time to the Young Guns ... unless those guns were their sons.
See? Not new.
Busch, sounding precisely like all those fellow champions just mentioned, continued by saying he worried it was too much too soon for a gang of kids who had yet to win races at NASCAR's highest level. He talked about paying dues. He talked about earning respect. He talked about ... well, the same stuff that drivers always talk about when that day comes that they wake up and see their name is now preceded by the word "veteran."
The day you look into the rearview mirror and it is suddenly filled with a lot of very young faces and one very old one. The evil grin of Father Time.
"Remember the 'young gun' movement? I was one of those guys, big emphasis on the word was," Jeff Gordon said that last fall, on the eve of the 2017 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, reflecting on his full-time farewell race one year earlier. "One day you're the kid all the old guys are complaining about. Then, it feels like overnight, you're the old guy going, 'You kids, get out of my way!'"
Gordon was being kind. He wasn't merely part of that movement; he was the instigator. He arrived in 1992 at the age of 21 when the field was primarily packed with 40-somethings and within two years was kicking their butts. Sponsors -- and yes, NASCAR -- couldn't scramble fast enough to leverage the kid to sell racing to new markets and demographics. As a Fortune 500 executive proclaimed to me in 1998, "He's not old and scary; he's young and cool."
As you might imagine, the old and scary set didn't much care for that sentiment, especially when they were being pushed out of rides by owners desperate to find "the next Jeff Gordon." For every Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne there was a Ron Barfield and Casey Atwood.
People were angry. That A&E series? It prompted screaming phone calls from a couple of future NASCAR Hall of Famers wanting to know why they didn't have their own TV specials. I know, because I worked on those shows and I had to hold the phone away from my ear when the screaming started. Those magazine stories? They prompted multiple heated behind-the-stack-of-tires garage lectures from other veterans, wanting to know "What in the hell has that little snot-nosed (blank) done to get him and his sponsor five pages in your magazine?! I've won the (blankety blank) Daytona 500!" I know because I was the one who had to wipe the flying hot spit off of my eyelids.
At the time, I relayed that story to Busch, the subject of both the TV show and the magazine article. He only smiled and said, "Tough (blank)." After all, he is extremely familiar with the benefits of hiring and promoting young talent. As a truck series team owner since 2010, he has employed a conga line of kids, including three of the 20-ish guys he'll be racing against at Daytona: Wallace, Byron and Jones.
In fairness, Busch's Tuesday speech wasn't all poisoned darts. Before closing he added: "I just do what I can do, and my part of it is what my part is."
Talking to folks at Toyota, his part in their marketing plan is pretty huge. Talking to folks at NASCAR, it's the same. The "marketing genius that's behind this deal" is NASCAR executive vice president and chief global sales and marketing officer Steve Phelps. He came to NASCAR from the NFL in '05, at the same time Busch was cranking it up in Cup. On Wednesday he admitted the sanctioning body hadn't done enough in the past to promote any drivers, young or old, instead leaving it up to teams and sponsors.
But Phelps also confirmed what his employees had told me earlier in the day, that Busch was indeed included on the roster of stars they will lean on as part of their aggressive 2018 promotional plans. It's a cross-generational list. And the guys on it should already know they are on it. What they choose to do with that is up to them.
"I feel like if some drivers were more willing to do these things, they'd get asked more to do it," Blaney said when asked about Busch's comments. "And the reason why I get asked to do it a lot is because I say yes a lot, because I think it's good for the sport and myself. I can tell you personally, [Busch] doesn't like doing a lot of stuff, so they don't ask him. ... That kind of made me upset, how he bashed that part of it. But, to each his own. If he doesn't want to do anything, so be it."
Coincidentally, over the weekend I watched the heist film "Logan Lucky." Guess who is among the large group of NASCAR veterans who make cameos alongside the youngsters, led by Blaney?
Yep. Kyle Busch.
Hey, maybe we should cut him some slack. He did give us something to talk about during a bland media tour.
And maybe it simply slipped his mind, all the stuff he's done and has been asked to do. Forgetting stuff, that's what happens when you start getting old.