Jeff Gordon reflects on the backlash against him

By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com
June 29, 2001
4:41 PM EDT (2041 GMT)

There are any number of seemingly legitimate reasons -- if you’re insecure -- to justify disliking Jeff Gordon. He’s young, he’s smart, he’s good looking, he’s got a good-looking wife, they're rich, he drives a way-cool car ... and he knows it, too.

Many people dislike Jeff Gordon because of what he has, but he still finds time to smile.

"I just think, life in general, how good it is," says the man in the cat-bird seat. "I have a wonderful life, it seems to me that things keep getting better as I get older."

Damn. Well, at least Gordon was brought down a peg or two last year ... if winning three races and finishing ninth in points constitutes a bad season. Look, however you spin it, last year did validate the "he’s nothing without Ray Evernham" school of thought (Evernham, Gordon’s crew chief for the first seven years of his career, was replaced by Robbie Loomis at the end of 1999). Right?

Gordon 2001 Stats  Gordon Driver Page  Winston Cup Standings  Get Jeff Gordon gear!  Video: Gordon Reacts  Audio: Waltrip Sounds Off

Wrong. With 20 races yet to go, Gordon already has another three-win season and seven top 5's (one fewer than he had all last year). With a reasonably solid hold on first-place in the points (126 ahead of Dale Jarrett), Gordon is a decided favorite to win his fourth Winston Cup title -- and he still doesn’t turn 30 until August. Dale Earnhardt didn’t win his fourth championship until he was 39. You want validation?

Most of us might find redemption in this season’s turnaround, but Gordon doesn’t.

"I don’t know," Gordon said when asked if he derived any satisfaction from this season. "I think I’ve earned a lot more respect over the last couple of years of the competitors and the media. I think if anything is coming out of this year, I’m getting more [of the] attention, but I don’t want to take anything away from Robbie [Loomis, his crew chief] and the guys. Just like when Ray was here, I felt like he played a key role in our success, along with the team and the resources [of Hendrick Motorsports], but I never felt like it revolved around one person."

Gordon leads Dale Jarrett by 126 points in the Winston Cup standings.

And there it is, yet another reason to dislike Gordon: Not only won’t he brag even the slightest little bit, but he won’t even succumb to the very common human failing of actually enjoying his revenge.

And as you stand in his hauler, an arm’s length removed from the kid who would be NASCAR’s king, trying to gauge whether the equanimity is real or just a carefully-worn façade, the real, annoying truth is: As much as those of us who are no longer young or good looking or even rich might want to, Jeff Gordon really isn’t terribly dislikable.

No, if Gordon is anything, he is, as he has been for as long as he’s been in NASCAR, just too good. Last year’s ninth-place finish was his worst since 1993, his first full season in NASCAR, when he finished an impressive 14th and was rookie of the year. But if Gordon won’t state the obvious, others will. "A lot of people just don’t like to stop and give credit where credit’s due," Evernham said last week. "They want to look for another reason. [But] Jeff Gordon is a tremendous racecar driver."

That Gordon is, and at the end of the day, it is perhaps the only "legitimate" reason to nurse any resentment toward the 29-year-old. But whatever the motivations behind a large percentage of the public’s unwillingness to embrace him, there’s no doubt that Gordon has been subject to an exacting standard during his career; a standard that his excellence created, but one that no one can or should reasonably be held to.

"I think the media maybe didn’t want to give a 23-year-old guy the credit," Gordon acknowledges. "That’s fine, you know, I understand that. I don’t care who they think is the greatest or not the greatest or whether I’m doing anything anybody else can do, I’m just glad to be a part of it."

What "it" is is the marriage of Gordon’s unparalleled talent with the money and the personnel of Hendrick Motorsports, a grouping that sustained its belief in itself even during last year’s well-documented struggles. "[Last year] wasn’t easy," Gordon admits. "But not so much because we weren’t battling for the championship. I knew going in that we had so many changes, we weren’t going to come out and set the world on fire. I didn’t expect that. There were times that it was frustrating, but I didn’t have very high expectations, so I wasn’t let down really hard."

Gordon is a fundamentally decent, human person. Printed words notwithstanding, he says "like," he drops his G's like the rest of us -- driving is always drivin’, for example -- he treats people, even those who want something from him, with respect and, yes, he has been bothered by the treatment he receives. "It used to bother me," he says, "’cause I didn’t understand. I was, like, ‘man, what’d I do to tick these people off, why they booing me?’ "

And, then, there it is again, that preternatural calm that makes some of us jealous and so obviously makes him great at what he does: "But I stopped analyzing it. If they’re making noise, I must be doing something right. I’m winning races, the team is good, I’m happy -- what more could I ask for?"

Impossible to dislike? Maybe, maybe not: Jeff Gordon owns a poodle.