In the Field: Elliott Sadler

It's not often in this sport that you can indulge a couple of your passions -- those that don't involve racecars -- in the short weeks that we have out of our cars.

But this week I'm blessed to be able to do that, along with Jamie McMurray, when we serve as honorary co-chairs of the sixth annual Drive for Autism Research golf tournament that FOX Sports director Artie Kempner has organized for Thursday in Wilmington, Del., just north of Dover International Speedway.

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We're pretty excited about it, because it's at the DuPont Country Club, which is really a beautiful place; and we'll raise a couple hundred thousand dollars for autism research.

Along with Jamie and I, who are really lucky to co-host the thing, Michael Waltrip, Kasey Kahne, Ray Evernham and a bunch of other NASCAR celebrities and personalities will be there, and we've also gotten a lot of help from the NFL.

There are a lot of NFL players that will show up. We've had several Dallas Cowboys players in the past and a ton of Philadelphia Eagles players plan to be there, from what I understand.

Artie has done an amazing job with this golf tournament the last couple of years, and he deserves a lot of the credit.

Along with him, we've all done a great job of promoting it, and Jamie and I are the lucky ones who get to host it. Jamie and I are great friends, but we share a lot of common interests where autism is concerned, because we both have nieces that have autism, so we're both affected by it.

So to be able to have a golf tournament like this, which we both can be involved in, at a beautiful place like DuPont is pretty neat.

The waiting list to get a team into this thing, from what I understand, is pretty big. Artie starts with a lot of the corporate sponsors that are involved in NASCAR racing and the NFL first, through his connections with those sports, and it kind of goes from there.

The participation we get from drivers and all kinds of people in the NASCAR world probably makes this the biggest tournament of the year. All the FOX guys show up: D.W., Jeff Hammond, Larry McReynolds and Steve Byrnes -- all those guys.

Everybody that's anybody involved in sports seems to show up, and it's just a neat deal. I'm very honored to be involved in it and to be able to raise so much money for autism awareness -- because we average around $200,000-300,000 each time we do this and it's just a neat, neat deal.

It's an honor for me to be able to play in it, not to mention hosting it along with Jamie -- and we really appreciate all the guys that take a day to come and support it, because our month of May has been really busy. And we're looking at the same thing coming up in June and July. (Continued)