Jeremy Mayfield, the best driver with the most solid credentials that's currently unemployed in NASCAR, says he'll take a 2009 driving gig for a percentage of the purse.

In fact, he's held to that contention since mid-summer, preferring to let his experience, which includes five career Cup victories and berths in the first two Chases, speak for itself.

But he still sits unemployed today and that, my friends, is a pretty stark statement on the abysmal nature of the NASCAR landscape, whether it's for this year's Sprint Cup, Nationwide or Camping World Truck Series.

Mayfield's in good company -- though no one in the group wants inclusion.

Since 2008 Mayfield's been joined by (in alphabetical order): Dave Blaney, Patrick Carpentier, Jeff Green, Michael McDowell, Joe Nemechek, Kyle Petty, Tony Raines, Ken Schrader, J.J. Yeley and now, apparently, even David Gilliland, unless Yates Racing is keeping him on retainer in case they get sponsorship for their hoped-for fourth car.

You could hold an M-80 in one hand, light it, say a prayer and then count the good rides that are still available on whatever you had left after the bang.

So these days, drivers have to be looking around, jumpy as hell and just wondering when the phone's gonna ring. If green flags drop at Daytona and they're still sitting at home, it'll be worse for them than holding a stick of dynamite at ignition.

But will it? Hell yeah.

One of the athletes who visited Daytona International Speedway last weekend did point out that stock car racing, after all, was just a game. That's true, but it's an income and it pays bills -- and that's what everyone faces, whether you're punching a clock at the mill or entertaining thousands at a motor race.

But that guy was employed, after all.

The fact is, only about 30 teams planning to run the 36-race Sprint Cup season have full sponsorships. There are at least five more planning full schedules that don't have full backing.

But five teams that attempted full schedules in 2008 right now aren't planning to in '09; and four more teams that were in the top 35 in the owner standings in '08 -- and thus ostensibly would be guaranteed starters in the Daytona 500 -- really don't even exist today. And two more full-time teams from '08 are in the same boat, out of business.

“

We sort of quit cutting corners and costs and just stopped paying attention to the little things, trying to save a buck here and there, and it's sort of biting a bunch of people in the butt now.

”

-- DALE EARNHARDT JR.

That's the brutal side of the economy.

How bad, you say? Well, for us regular folk, this is pretty silly. But the other day Denny Hamlin, who's certainly earned the right to be a relatively new private jet owner, was talking about how he'd shared a commercial flight to Daytona Beach with Jeff Gordon.

You heard that right. And it gets better.

"The ones that are in the sport and definitely will be here every week, we're trying to do everything we can to cut costs," Hamlin said. "[Gordon] would never [fly commercial] if things weren't like it was. We talked earlier about we're going to start, I guess, jet pooling back and forth and using each other because us drivers have gotten spoiled over the last, I guess, three or four years or so.

"We all have the planes and everything, and most of the time we're all taking off at the exact same time and we have two people sitting in the plane. It just doesn't make sense."

Tell all those unemployed guys that, or the hundreds of their fans who are in the same boat. To sum it up, you never want to let clichés run amok, but when desperate times arise, well, you know the rest.

If you don't, take it from Dale Earnhardt Jr., who last weekend said -- once again blowing that ignorant impression he's been labeled with for being lackadaisical about a lot of things -- that he's tried to stay abreast of what's going on economically because "I'm in this. I have a lot of business connections in this sport and things that I'm doing as an owner and whatnot, that it would be smart for me to be aware."

He's aware of one thing, and it's not a pretty picture.

"I mean, just like everything else, over the last several years we sort of all were living oblivious to the perils of what we were to face and what we're facing now," Earnhardt said. "We sort of quit cutting corners and costs and just stopped paying attention to the little things, trying to save a buck here and there, and it's sort of biting a bunch of people in the butt now."

But for every bleeding butt, there's an opportunist, whether it's selling band-aids or starting race teams. The only thing that might save some of the unemployed is that pseudo Cup teams seem to be springing up almost out of the ground.

That might open a scenario that both Earnhardt and Hamlin touched on. Driving for free, since the risks are no less and just like for the race teams, race drivers accrue expenses to come out on the road, particularly for a 10-day event like Daytona's Speedweeks; seems like a ridiculous option.

And even though these are desperate times, and setting wisecracks about overpaid athletes aside -- when people like Jeff Gordon are flying commercial -- racing for a percentage is about a big enough pill to have to swallow.

But there's always a flip side to the coin.

"If I was in their position, yeah, I would do whatever it takes to be on that race track," Hamlin said. "I mean, it's radical and it would never happen, but if you've got to race for free, it doesn't matter -- because if you're out on that race track it's better than sitting at home because a lot of people, when you're out of sight, you're out of mind.

"Whatever it takes to get on track, whether it's a second-rate team or whatever it takes to do it, I think that's what's most important. I don't think any driver can cut his salary or anything to get a ride -- I think it's more sponsor-driven, more the team's say.

"They're going to go with whatever driver is going to get them that sponsor or whatever the sponsor wants. It's not just about overall driving talent much anymore."

For better or worse, Mayfield's found out about that, as he continues to plumb the phone lines seeking backing.

And neither he, nor anyone else can count on Junior -- the sport's most popular driver -- these days, and maybe that's the starkest statement of all.

"I don't know how to get somebody a job," Earnhardt said. "It's almost impossible right now."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.