It sounds so simple -- just be yourself.

That's what NASCAR wants its top drivers to do, a point executives within the sanctioning body further drove home a few weeks ago by loosening rules relating to on-track conduct. Petty run-ins no longer necessitate the feared call to the NASCAR hauler. Well aware that ratings and attendance numbers have taken a dip, NASCAR is trying to encourage drivers to let their true personalities show, in the hopes that those in the fan base won't perceive competitors to be as vanilla as they do now.

What's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing. NASCAR over time has steadily backed away from a once-heavy-handed approach to policing the sport, to the point where it essentially allowed things like the year-end Nationwide feud between Brad Keselowski and Denny Hamlin to play itself out. "I honestly believe that the visits to the Sprint Cup hauler for the last couple of seasons have been less than it's been in the past," NASCAR president Mike Helton said recently, and he's probably right. No, they're not going to let guys start slugging each other. But if it doesn't compromise safety, and it doesn't impact the championship picture, these days NASCAR seems more apt to let it go.

And yet, on this subject, NASCAR has only so much control. Goodness, it seems like such an easy task, to loosen up, to be more colorful, to act at the race track and before the cameras more like you act at home with family and friends. That's what fans want to see, what reporters want to write about, what NASCAR wants to foster. But because of their ties to corporate sponsors, competitors can show so much.

"I don't think it's NASCAR that's kept us all from being ourselves as much as it is we have to be so conscious of our sponsors," said Tony Stewart, who became a team owner last year. "I think that's more of what's held everybody back verses NASCAR. NASCAR has let us be ourselves, and let us have our personalities. It's corporate America. We're not going against corporate America, obviously, but you realize why we have to be in the shell a little bit, so to speak. Other pro sports don't have corporate sponsors on their uniforms and on their cars. That's why our sport is a little different from other sports."

Actually, athletes in other pro sports, soccer and golf especially, do wear corporate logos on their playing gear. But like golfers, drivers become so closely intertwined with their sponsors that they essentially become their representatives, as much so as if they actually worked for the company. If those companies like to push the edge a little, they'll allow their drivers more rope. But if they're conservative, wary of anything that might reflect poorly upon them, then drivers have to walk a very narrow line. Tiger Woods stands as an example of an athlete closely tied to sponsors who let his true personality show -- accidentally, in this case. And we all know how the companies he represented, several of which have dropped him, felt about that.

That kind of thing seems less likely to happen in NASCAR, given that corporations typically sign multi-year deals with teams and not drivers, and you'd hope the competitors are savvy enough to not wreck vehicles in their own driveway at 3 a.m. But it's still the man behind the wheel who essentially becomes a spokesperson, and he often has to amend his behavior as a result. When Stewart got involved in a physical altercation with a photographer at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2002, NASCAR fined him $10,000. His car sponsor at the time, The Home Depot, fined him $50,000. In terms of driver behavior, that nugget shows who's really in control.

2010 Cup Schedule

Track	Time (ET)	TV
Daytona	1 p.m.	FOX
Fontana	3 p.m.	FOX
Las Vegas	3 p.m.	FOX
Atlanta	1 p.m.	FOX
Bristol	1 p.m.	FOX
Martinsville	1 p.m.	FOX
Phoenix	7:30 p.m.	FOX
Texas	3 p.m.	FOX
Talladega	1 p.m.	FOX
Richmond	7:30 p.m.	FOX
Darlington	7:30 p.m.	FOX
Dover	1 p.m.	FOX
Charlotte	5:45 p.m.	FOX
Pocono	1 p.m.	TNT
Michigan	1 p.m.	TNT
Sonoma	3 p.m.	TNT
Loudon	1 p.m.	TNT
Daytona	7:30 p.m.	TNT
Chicago	7:30 p.m.	TNT
Indianapolis	1 p.m.	ESPN
Pocono	1 p.m.	ESPN
Watkins Glen	1 p.m.	ESPN
Michigan	1 p.m.	ESPN
Bristol	7:30 p.m.	ABC
Atlanta	7:30 p.m.	ESPN
Richmond	7:30 p.m.	ABC
Loudon	1 p.m.	ESPN
Dover	1 p.m.	ESPN
Kansas	1 p.m.	ESPN
Fontana	3 p.m.	ESPN
Charlotte	7:30 p.m.	ABC
Martinsville	1 p.m.	ESPN
Talladega	1 p.m.	ESPN
Texas	3 p.m.	ESPN
Phoenix	3 p.m.	ESPN
Homestead	1 p.m.	ESPN

"They keep saying, OK, we want these drivers to revert back to their personalities and all that. Well, NASCAR can only do so much about that. The sponsors have got to lighten up with this thing. Let the guys go, let them be who they are. It didn't hurt [Dale] Earnhardt with GM, it hasn't hurt Kyle Busch with his sponsor," said former race track promoter Humpy Wheeler, who now owns the consulting firm The Wheeler Co.

"Corporate behavior, that's probably the worst thing that ever happened in this sport. You don't want guys doing punk things, I'm not talking about that. But this corporate behavior stuff has gotten us to the point where it's made a lot of the drivers [seem like] they're boring when they're not. If they could forget about having to be corporately behaved, it would be a different thing."

Regardless of how much NASCAR relaxes rules relating to driver behavior, some drivers still have to adhere to stricter codes of conduct. Cover this sport long enough, and you come to realize that some sponsors can be overly sensitive, taking offense to comments or actions that might seem innocuous in and of themselves. But if you're paying $20 million to fund a car on NASCAR's premier series, you get plenty of leverage, and to a certain extent you have the power to dictate how your pitchman behaves in public.

Felix Sabates, minority car owner at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing who has fielded vehicles at NASCAR's top level since 1987, bemoans the current state of affairs, and remembers how it used to be.

"We need to give these guys boxing gloves and let them go beat up each other. That would sell tickets," said Sabates, perhaps only half-joking. "I love it. Let them go beat up somebody. Be competitive and have some fire. I'm friendly with 99 percent of drivers, but some are so vanilla, I want to thank everybody back at the shop. You don't have the ... free spirit of Kyle Petty. You don't have those guys anymore. You had guys who were good drivers and sold tickets. Ernie Irvan was one of those. A loud-mouthed obnoxious SOB, but people loved Ernie Irvan. Davey Allison was a feisty mother, and those guys aren't around anymore. You've got Kyle Busch. And maybe this new kid Keselowski. Name me another."

Stewart? "Stewart's not like that anymore," Sabates countered. "He's a car owner now. He wrecks the car, it costs him money. They think about that stuff. They don't want to wreck those cars, because they have pay to fix it. They don't have to go beat each other up. Maybe some chest-pushing. Like wrestling, those guys don't hurt each other. Just push each other around a little bit."

Maybe that's going a bit too far. To be fair, the argument that the entire Sprint Cup garage is vanilla is a little overblown. Even if Stewart has been mellowed by ownership, Busch, Keselowski, Hamlin, Juan Montoya, Scott Speed, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton and even Jeff Gordon are all colorful and outspoken characters whose sponsors allow them plenty of leeway, and whose comments usually come across as genuine. And in all honesty, there are some drivers out there who are just more sedate by nature, and no amount of rule-relaxation is going to change that.

In the middle, though, are the drivers who present themselves a certain way in public to please the sponsors they represent. Truthfully, they're in a somewhat uneasy and unenviable position, having to toe a line of behavior like a politician running for office, no matter how charismatic or forthright NASCAR wishes them to become. And yet, we can all relate to having to adhere to workplace codes of conduct. In that way, despite their fame and riches, these drivers are just like everybody else.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.