Follow with me, if you will. When Rusty Wallace, left, retired from full-time racing after the 2005 season, ABC/ESPN hired him, first to help out with its IndyCar coverage and then for its NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup broadcasts. Wallace has functioned as both a booth color analyst for IndyCar (remember when he said it was the best Daytona 500 he'd ever seen in the waning laps of the 2006 Indy 500?) and NASCAR coverage, but was switched to studio and pre-race host this season. Okay, so apparently when Wallace signed up with ABC/ESPN, his contract stated he couldn't own a Cup team while he still worked for the network. Wallace owns a Nationwide Series team, Rusty Wallace Inc., which fields two cars for his son Steve and David Stremme. That didn't seem to prevent Wallace from working Nationwide races this year and last. Shoot, his kid and both brothers are in any given Nationwide race and no one apparently thought this was a conflict of interest. So now, ABC/ESPN has given Wallace permission to own a Cup team since the network has been using Cup owner Ray Evernham on some mid-week shows, and this month analyst Brad Daugherty bought into a team that will field a Cup car next season. Read more here.
-- Michele Vincze
Photo: Star-Telegram/Brian Lawdermilk
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