Two years ago, AT&T and Sprint waged a court battle that essentially concerned the limits of sponsorship in NASCAR. To massively oversimplify, Sprint won, and AT&T, corporate parent to Cingular, the primary on Richard Childress Racing's No. 31 car driven by Jeff Burton, effectively took its money and went home. Can you say Pyrrhic Victory?

I don't know ... with teams large and small, good and not-so-good, scrambling to find the money to keep the lights on and mechanics paid, with TV numbers continuing to slide, with whole towns reliant on the health and well-being of NASCAR struggling desperately to survive, somehow, I get the feeling that that AT&T money might look pretty good right about now.