Web reports, ESPN and Earnhardts, oh my!

On the surface, it appears that this weekend’s "news" about the Dale Earnhardt Jr. contract talks is directly contradictory.
It started Thursday morning with a website called MaxChevy.com reporting that a 51 percent ownership stake in Dale Earnhardt Inc. for Earnhardt Jr. had "essentially been negotiated." Glen Grissom, a guy who’s been around racing for a long time and has a lot of good contacts, was behind that report.
Hours later, as it often does, ESPN pretended it invented the story by reporting in breathless terms at the top of its "NASCAR Now" show almost exactly what Grissom had – including the idea of a board of director-type structure set up for Earnhardt Jr. to "report" to.
ESPN did call DEI and talk to Max Siegel, the president of global operations there, to confirm that before taking the story and running with it. One of its online stories quoted a "source" in fleshing out details of the story, and it was fairly apparent that Siegel himself was that source.
Why, you might ask, did your faithful correspondent (in other words, me) not make the same phone calls. Well, it just so happened that on Thursday afternoon I was scheduled to go to Mooresville to see Kelley Elledge any way at the scrapbooking store she and Wendy Childers own up there.
I am working on a story for later this year about people in the sport with talents, interests and pursuits outside the sport, and the Scrap Shack is on that list. (By the way, if you’re ever in a position to bet on how many different shades of paper you can buy to put in a scrapbook, by all means take the over.)
As we wrapped that up, I asked Elledge if there was any news on the contract front. She said the sides were talking just about every day and there had been a lot of things talked about back and forth. So I drove back home and didn’t think much more about it.
Well, after catching the screaming headlines on "NASCAR Now" I tried to touch base with Elledge once again to make sure I hadn’t simply failed to ask the right question. She sent a reply to my e-mail inquiry early Friday morning, and that’s when I wrote a story saying that she said no formal offer for 51 percent ownership has been presented to her and, by extension, her brother.
So what’s the real story?
Well, I don’t think this is necessarily a case where anybody is off base with what is being reported.
Earnhardt Jr. has said he wants control of DEI. When he was pressed on what that means at Daytona’s media day in January, someone asked him if that meant 51 percent. Earnhardt Jr. said yes. In the weeks since, that number has sort of become the key fact in some minds.
If DEI has put forth some kind of proposal that offers Earnhardt Jr. 51 percent of the company’s assets, in terms of how it might add up on paper, I don’t think that necessarily equates to "control," and it’s control that he’s looking for.
Earnhardt Jr. knows that he’s going to be defined in his career by what he does on the track, and if he believes his team isn’t getting what it needs to compete at the sport’s highest level now he wants to change that so that he is ultimately judged on what he does to make sure he has a fair chance to reach his goals. If he falls short of expectations, that way he’d at least know he gave it everything he had.
Teresa Earnhardt, on the other hand, shouldn’t be expected to merely skip away happily after ceding control of a company she helped build. She’s smart, too, and she knows that in the court of public opinion if it appears Earnhardt Jr. has been offered what he’s asked for – that 51 percent number – and he says that’s not enough that the prevailing opinions about this whole soap opera might change.
If a board of directors is created to oversee the operation of the "new" DEI, how is that board constituted. Who’s on it and, more to the point, who gets to pick who’s on it? Answer that and you’ll answer who actually would have control of the company in such a setup.
DEI has been on the public relations defensive on this story since the first time Earnhardt Jr. spoke in January in response to the comments Teresa Earnhardt made in a Wall Street Journal story in December about her stepson needing to choose between being a NASCAR driver and a rock star.
Earnhardt Jr. and his sister have been calling the dance pretty much ever since then, using the leverage of Earnhardt Jr.’s popularity successfully to frame the reaction and discussion to this story in the garage as well as in the "NASCAR nation." What has happened in the past 48 hours, in my mind, is that DEI has tried to move that ball back toward midfield a little bit.
What’s really happening is that Max Siegel and Kelley Elledge are still talking about a new deal for Earnhardt Jr. Rest assured that both of them have plenty of smart people advising them along the way, too, and that include Teresa Earnhardt on the DEI said and Earnhardt Jr. himself on that side.
My belief, and it’s nothing really more than that, is that those talks have crossed a very critical point. I don’t think they’re talking any more about whether or not they can get a deal done, I think now they’re talking about how they can best get one done.
There’s a huge difference.