As post-race altercations go, it wasn't much. It wasn't as historic as Cale Yarborough slinging his helmet at Donnie Allison in Daytona, as vicious as Kevin Harvick trying to strangle Greg Biffle in Bristol, or as inherently comic as Jeff Gordon chasing Tony Stewart through the garage area at Watkins Glen. There wasn't even a memorable your-wife-wears-the-firesuit remark. Cup Series director John Darby said he'd seen more shoving trying to get into a Wal-Mart.

Let's play the feud

Ryan Newman and Joey Logano share a bunch of words and a couple shoves after the two got together at Michigan.

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So no, the fracas at Michigan International Raceway involving Joey Logano and Ryan Newman was far from memorable, although who knows what it might have escalated to if NASCAR officials hadn't intervened when they did. But even that relatively minor squabble -- one guy talking, one guy seething, one hand reached out to a shoulder -- created such a buzz Sunday afternoon that it quickly began to rival Kevin Harvick's victory for attention. Onlookers circled the combatants as if they were boxers in a prizefight. Anyone who had video or audio of the incident suddenly became very popular in the media center. Chat boards lit up with opinions as to who was wrong and who was right.

All of which leads to one conclusion -- drivers in NASCAR need to get angry at one another more often.

Now, we're not going to stoop to the "slug somebody" tactic that Bruton Smith and some other track promoters have long advocated; physical violence is a cheap way to resolve any personal conflict, and professional drivers of today aren't the underpaid roughnecks who used to decide disputes by brawling beneath the grandstands. There absolutely is a line here, and it's drawn at throwing a punch. But there's nothing wrong with raw emotion, with drivers getting out of cars and demanding answers, pointing fingers and raising voices and making veiled threats of on-track retribution. We need real rivals and enemies. We need these guys not to all like each other so much. We need a little more of what they call the Georgia-Georgia Tech football game -- clean, old fashioned hate.

Sure, you see glimpses of it from time to time, whether it's the Keselowski clan threatening to run down Carl Edwards, or Logano and Harvick exchanging words at Pocono, or Harvick and Juan Montoya shoving one another at Watkins Glen. There was the time Gordon (with his helmet still on) went after Matt Kenseth at Bristol, the time Stewart and Robby Gordon had a slap-fight in the garage at Daytona, the time a couple of wives and girlfriends went at it. Those incidents grow to become as memorable as anything that happens on the race track, and they generate a buzz and an interest that not even great competition -- and the competition this year has been very, very good -- can match.

The problem, though, is that NASCAR drivers today are in simply no position to allow animosity to fester. Most disputes get resolved quickly through an exchange of text messages or phone calls, something dictated by practicality. Let's face it -- NASCAR drivers are effectively neighbors 38 weeks a year in a cloistered motor home lot surrounded by high fencing and protected by security guards, and holding a sustained grudge would be the equivalent of the guy next door painting his house pink. They share airplanes to or from race sites. They share sponsors or manufacturers or agents or technical alliances. It's a vacuum-packed lifestyle in which only 43 families exist, and in that environment making waves can make things uncomfortable.

There's no real parallel in other sports. Tony Romo and Donovan McNabb won't share a ride home after the Cowboys play the Redskins, and Derek Jeter and David Ortiz don't share adjoining rooms during a series between the Yankees and Red Sox. Heck, for that matter, Yarborough and David Pearson didn't exactly retire to adjacent Prevosts after tangling on the race track back in the day. But in modern NASCAR, everybody's in it together -- literally and figuratively -- and no dispute lasts for very long. How many current Cup Series drivers can you theorize have a real dislike for one another? Edwards and Brad Keselowski, probably. Kurt Busch and Jimmie Johnson, maybe. Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. have always mixed about as well as oil and Amp. But beyond that? It's a reach. You can't stay angry at a guy if you might need to hitch a ride home in his Learjet in a few weeks.

Which is unfortunate, because from a spectator's perspective unquestionably the most enjoyable part of last season was the end, and not because Johnson was marching toward an unprecedented fourth consecutive Cup title. It was because drivers were getting mad at one another, and the disputes weren't getting smoothed over in the way they usually do, and every race weekend down the stretch carried the unmistakable hint of malice. The extended Nationwide Series soap opera involving Keselowski and Denny Hamlin was worth the price of admission alone. The you-punt-me-I'll-punt-you episode between Montoya and Stewart at Homestead was riveting. You had to watch, because you didn't know what any of them would do next.

Again, as with everything else, there are limits -- exceeded by Jimmy Spencer when he punched Kurt Busch, and by Edwards earlier this season when he flipped Keselowski into the air, intentionally or not. But unleashed the right way, anger can be a glory to behold. Nothing showed that more than one hot night at Bristol eight years ago this week, when fury flew faster than the race cars on the half-mile track. Ward Burton threw his shoes at Earnhardt Jr., Johnson flipped off Robby Gordon, Elliott Sadler punched an ambulance, and Jeff Gordon bumped Rusty Wallace out of the way to win. It was epic Bristol and epic NASCAR, the close racing and personal blowups combining to create one of the greatest nights the sport has ever seen.

Oh, to have a little of that open hostility each and every week. It makes sports so much fun, as anyone who's ever watched an Auburn-Alabama matchup or a Raiders-Broncos game can readily attest. Good thing John Elway and Howie Long didn't have that walk back to the motor home lot to patch things up.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.