Behind every controversy, a villainous scapegoat lurks

She sneaks in under cover of darkness, using the master key only she has, wearing shoes with silent soles and carrying a small satchel of treats laced with diazepam in case there are dogs that need to be knocked out. She enters the building and walks to the security room, where a guard is jolted from his turkey Reuben by the sight of the big boss he's never met before. In less than a minute he's on the floor, unconscious, thanks to a nifty little sleeper hold she learned in the apparel racket. She enters the shop area and shines her flashlight beam along the long row of engines, searching for the one her stepson will use that Saturday night.

There. Along the far wall, near the corner. From a coat pocket, she removes a small black device that she sticks to the inside of the airflow barrel within the carbureted power plant. The timed charge is small enough not to be noticed, yet just large enough to do the job. Her bit of sabotage complete, she flees the facility and returns to her compound, where a few nights later she will watch gleefully as her handiwork detonates with six laps remaining and ruins Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s race at Richmond.

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The most frightening part? Some people actually believe stuff like this.

Maybe not the overly-dramatized, dime-store crime novel version, but something relatively close. In the wake of Earnhardt's engine failure Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway, the latest in a string of such failures that knocked him out of the Chase for the Nextel Cup, the e-mail box is brimming with conspiracy theorists who claim it was the handiwork of wicked stepmother Teresa. Maybe she didn't break into the engine shop late one night and plant an explosive charge in Junior's engine. Maybe she disabled it in some other way. Or paid someone else to do it. Or arranged that his engine be made of substandard material, like the steel on the doomed cruise liner Titanic.

It's all so patently outlandish, so stupendously ridiculous, yet some people buy into it.

"I truly believe step-mommy dearest sabotaged this kid," wrote one otherwise reasoned fan from Chicago. Yes, Earnhardt himself stoked this fire when he said "they seem to fall apart after they plug 'em into my car," following his fifth engine failure this season and third in his last seven starts. His relationship with Teresa, whom he fought bitter battles with over ownership of Dale Earnhardt Inc. and his No. 8, is rocky as best. He's moving on to Hendrick Motorsports next season.

But there is a wide, almost unbridgeable canyon between personal dislike and the kind of undercutting that would damage not just Earnhardt Jr., but DEI as a whole. Earnhardt may not get along with Teresa, but he gets along exceedingly well with president Max Siegel, vice president Richie Gilmore, teammate Martin Truex Jr. and just about everyone else at DEI. If Teresa ever were to hatch such a dastardly plan, those are some of the people she'd have to convince to take part in it. And that isn't happening.

Then there's the whole impracticality of the matter, which completely glosses over the detail that DEI and Richard Childress Racing are in the midst of merging engine operations, and overlooks the fact that Junior's engines have been tenuous all year. He blew his first one at California, the second race of the season, and three months before he announced his intentions to leave DEI. His second one came at Texas in April. When it comes to engines, the No. 8 team knows it walks the tightrope -- two weeks ago before the Labor Day race at California, Earnhardt took only single-digit laps in practice because his camp was worried about the thing blowing up.

Even at Richmond, his engine was only six laps -- a little more than two minutes -- from surviving the full distance, despite the fact it had to be pushed to the limit by the most desperate driver in the field. But there's a bigger problem here, and one that has nothing to do with rods and pistons and valves. It has to do with why so many who follow this sport seem so willing to ignore root causes and reason, and instead reflexively point a finger at some shadowy figure up to no good.

Michael Waltrip busted for an illegal fuel accelerant at Daytona? He was sabotaged by anti-Toyota forces! Crew chiefs Steve Letarte and Chad Knaus busted for Car of Tomorrow violations at Sonoma? They were set up and ratted on by anti-Hendrick forces! Dale Jr. blows too many engines in one season? It's all Teresa's fault! The issues, the players, and the seasons change, but one thing is constant -- too many people turn a blind eye to personal responsibility, and look for an easy, almost comic-book scapegoat upon which to heap blame.

Enough. It's immature, irrational, and it erodes the credibility of a sport that has too many issues on that front already. Earnhardt Jr.'s engines broke not because Teresa undertook some sort of fantastical vendetta, but because of a more mundane reason. The driver was too hard on the accelerator. A part obtained from a vendor failed. It wasn't calibrated for the right air temperature or humidity level. Or someone in the engine shop, near the end of a long season full of long work weeks, got lazy or sloppy or tired.

The people who build engines perform autopsies on ones that blow, and almost always pinpoint reasons for the failure. Saturday's was reportedly because of a broken oil pump belt -- and not a spiteful stepmother, subduing guard dogs and security officers, and dashing off through the night.

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer