Senior Chief Jeff Priest was standing along souvenir row at Talladega chatting with a three-star admiral he brought with him as part of the U.S. Navy's at-track presence when a sharply dressed man in civilian clothes tapped him on the elbow.

The gentleman was a former Navy sailor in the 1970s, had done his tour of duty and then, after fulfilling his commitment, got out. The man, reminiscing of how he wished he would have extended his service, introduced Priest to his son, who had just joined the Navy and was due to ship that October as a nuclear engineer. Congratulations were exchanged and then the elephant in the room appeared.

"What made you decide to join the Navy?" asked Priest, as he most always does to new recruits.

Marketing, most executives will point to. It can determine what's working from the advertising dollars that are mandated by Congress, and a large portion of the Navy's budget was painted on a blue and yellow racecar just inside those Talladega grandstands. But who's to say it wasn't the print ads in hunting magazines? Or the television spots? Or the coveted influence of a high school friend who signed up a week earlier?

So when Priest asked the young man the question during the friendly exchange back in 2005, he didn't exactly expect to hear the answer he received.

"I saw David Stremme driving the Navy racecar and I went down and saw the Navy recruiter," the teenager told Priest.

Priest smiled.

"I grabbed him and asked him to tell that story to our three-star admiral," said Priest, who is the Navy's motorsports program manager. "He did, and the admiral just loved him; he ate it up.

"There are all kinds of stories like that happening trackside, but we don't have a tool to measure the number of enlistments attributed to exposure on the track. It's one tool in our tool bag of Congressionally mandated advertising that we do."

For some branches, it's the primary tool. But how useful is it?

That's the magic question for the four military branches involved in NASCAR team sponsorship. No metric is available to measure the direct success of something such as a NASCAR military sponsorship or how it affects recruitment. There are numbers on exposure during a race. There are television ratings. There are ratios of dollar spent vs. dollar made due to sponsorship for nearly every sticker that adheres to a racecar. But this is more than just dollars.

"The Army is not selling a case of oil or a box of peanuts or Tide or whatever -- all good products. But we're basically selling a way of life, what some call an obligation to give something back to the country," said Michael Sullivan, the U.S. Army's deputy assistant for marketing and advertising who is also responsible for the Army's recruiting efforts.

NASCAR falls under his job duties. But unless someone plainly states that they enlisted specifically due to that branch's name being on a stock car -- as the Navy recruit did at Talladega -- there's no way of fully knowing how successful that marketing tool can be. Compared with direct mail, print and television advertising, NASCAR sponsorship can be the most attractive pull.

"Understand that 72 percent of the NASCAR fan base is between the ages of 17 and 53," Priest said of the Navy's research. "That is our target market plus influencers: moms, dads, aunts, uncles, friends of the family, former military. Branding the Navy as a winning team is the goal behind the association with NASCAR. How can you get a Navy billboard around a racetrack every week for 35 weeks out of a year? You're not going to get that for the cost of a NASCAR sponsorship."

The Navy pays between $5 and $6 million for primary sponsorship of JR Motorsports' No. 88 Chevrolet and driver Brad Keselowski in the Nationwide Series, and 2008 will mark the branch's eighth season in NASCAR. It began in 2001 with a partial Truck Series sponsorship before moving to Fitz-Bradshaw Racing and Stremme. Two years ago, the Navy partnered with JR Motorsports in what Priest admits is a dream deal with the Dale Earnhardt Jr.-owned team. "It's a no-brainer to be associated with the most popular driver," he said.

"It just happens that the strong point of recruiting the force happens to be exactly where the NASCAR nation is." -- Lt. Clyde A. Vaughn, National Guard

It was also a no-brainer for the Navy to remain in the Nationwide Series, according to Priest. A marketing firm hired by the Navy before the 2003 season suggested NASCAR's No. 2 series is the proper fit due to it being considered a developmental series and the goals that matched those of the Navy.

"We're probably spending a third of what a competitive Cup sponsorship costs for a full season in the developmental series," Priest said. "That goes back to the fact we're developing young men and women into solid citizens four or five years down the road. That's the same concept here in the Nationwide Series.

"I'm sure the dollar value is quite a bit higher on the Cup side just because of the inflated cost of the commercials during a Cup race. I would say the Navy would prefer to run 35 races with the name on the side of the car and that being our car as opposed to running eight races and only having minor associate sponsorship on a Cup car for the rest of the races."

Contrast that with the Army's Cup Series sponsorship of Dale Earnhardt Inc.'s No. 8 Chevrolet. Depending upon the number of races in which the Army is the primary sponsor -- it was the primary in 34 of 36 races last season -- the deal can run between $8 and $10 million.

Whereas the Navy worked its way from a part-time Truck Series sponsorship to full-time Nationwide status, the Army went all-in. After sponsorship in NHRA from 2000-2002, a full-time Cup Series sponsorship with MB2 Motorsports' No. 01 Pontiac in 2003 began the Army's NASCAR journey with driver Jerry Nadeau.

An accident sidelined Nadeau, and a shuffling of drivers completed the season before Joe Nemechek took over the ride late in 2003 and continued through 2006. Now, through a shift to Ginn Racing and now DEI, Mark Martin is the veteran face of the Army's motorsports marketing campaign along with rookie Aric Almirola.

"Our primary reasoning is the recruiting side of that," said Sullivan, who reports directly to the Army's assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs in the recruiting department. "The large fan base that NASCAR has and the opportunity to get in front of them for three days if all three series are at the same location, I don't think you beat that in terms of the ability and opportunity to talk and show folks what the Army has to offer."

In the middle is the Air Force and National Guard. The Air Force is a co-primary on the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford for eight Cup races with driver Jon Wood, in addition to partial Truck Series sponsorship for Wood throughout the season.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 88 will carry National Guard colors for 16 of the 36 Cup races this season. The branch will also be the co-primary sponsor for JR Motorsports' No. 5 car in 21 Nationwide Series races, which will be shared by Earnhardt and Landon Cassill.

"We have to recruit some 70,000 Army Guard soldiers a year. The active Army has to recruit 80,000. This is big business," said Lt. Gen. Clyde A. Vaughn of the National Guard. "It just happens that the strong point of recruiting the force happens to be exactly where the NASCAR nation is. You don't have to put two and two together too many times to figure this out."

Currently, an estimated 150,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq and an additional 28,000 in Afghanistan. Critics may wonder why military branches have increased their visibility in sports marketing specifically while the nation is fighting a multi-front war on terror.

Put more bluntly: Why are military branches spending money on sports sponsorship during a war?

Because that's where the next recruit may be.

"You can't really just sit back in the old recruiting station and just hope someone is going to come walking in the door," Sullivan said.

Added Priest: "We can't just quit spending money on advertising. You still have to recruit. You still have to get the word out that the Navy is hiring. And if we choose to use this as a tool -- the most popular sport, the fastest-growing sport ... it just makes so much more sense to be where we are. A young man or woman doesn't wake up one morning and say, 'You know what, I want to join the Navy.'"