Alanis King, Racing columnistAug 31, 2023, 09:28 AM ET
In November, Kyle Busch reached a milestone he didn’t expect to hit until his NASCAR Cup Series retirement: his last race in the No. 18. It was the season finale at Phoenix Raceway, and the car he had become synonymous with — a yellow Toyota Camry sprinkled with M&M’s — would soon be gone for good. The weekend was full of tearful goodbyes, both to Busch’s teammates and to the athlete he’d been for 15 years.
The night before the race, Busch thought about the gravity of it all.
“I’m like, ‘Tomorrow’s the last time I’m in the M&M’s car. Tomorrow’s the last time I’m in the 18,'” Busch told ESPN. “I wanted to run the whole rest of my time in the 18, but the cards weren’t on the table.”
Unlike in so many other sports, NASCAR grants numbers to teams, not athletes. Busch drove for Joe Gibbs Racing from 2008 through 2022, becoming a two-time Cup champion and Toyota’s winningest NASCAR driver. He was the No. 18. But when M&M’s parent company, Mars Inc., decided to leave the sport after 2022, Busch had to look for new teams.
One of his first thoughts was: “What number am I going to be?”
“There are drivers who come up through the ranks who have numbers that are close to them,” Busch said. “But a lot of times, up at the top level, the NASCAR Cup Series, you just get in there with whatever the number is. When I joined Hendrick Motorsports, it was the 5 car. When I joined Joe Gibbs Racing, it was 18. Now, at [Richard Childress Racing, I’m] the 8.”
NASCAR’s system might seem counterintuitive, considering athletes build empires around names and numbers, but it allows teams to build empires instead, and the best teams outlast their drivers. Dale Jarrett and Bobby Labonte drove the Gibbs No. 18 before Busch, and Mark Martin, Kasey Kahne and Kyle Larson drove the Hendrick No. 5 after him.
That’s why Justin Marks, who founded Cup team Trackhouse Racing in 2020, chose numbers and built his empire around them.
“I wanted the numbers to be endemic to the team, because numbers don’t travel with the drivers,” Marks told ESPN. “Two of the most iconic numbers between 1 and 100, independent of what they’ve done in NASCAR, are the 1 and the 99.”
Both numbers had history in NASCAR. To rebrand them for Trackhouse and its drivers, Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez, Marks stylized them with a slash to match the team’s logo.
“It was important for us to do a brand element in the number itself,” Marks said. “In a lot of other forms of motorsport, the liveries on cars tend to be endemic to the teams. When the McLaren goes by in IndyCar and Formula One, you immediately know it’s a McLaren.
“In our sport, we’ve gotten to a place where there’s nothing sacred about these schemes as far as how they relate to the teams, because the entire race car is a sellable asset. So then, you look for opportunities to have some sort of continuity across all of the race cars and across the season. We can have a different sponsor every week, but it’s instantly identifiable as a Trackhouse car.”
Marks plans to keep the Nos. 1 and 99 forever, but he knows that can be tricky. When Busch left for Richard Childress Racing, the Gibbs team shelved the No. 18 — for now. His replacement, Ty Gibbs, took the No. 54 instead.
“When the 18 is on the track, it’s burned in everybody’s mind that it’s Kyle Busch,” Marks said. “If the number is so closely associated with the history of a single driver, sometimes it’s hard to start a new chapter. It would be more difficult to put Ty Gibbs in the 18 and start to tell the story of Ty Gibbs.
“If we win five championships with Ross Chastain, and he races for us until the age of 44 and retires, that’s a long time from now, but I imagine we’d have a discussion around whether we want to continue running the 1.”
Busch’s No. 8 has its own lore. It is famously associated with Dale Earnhardt Jr., who drove the No. 88 when he moved to Hendrick Motorsports.
“When Dale Jr. switched, all the fans who had the 8 tattooed on them were wondering what the hell they were going to do,” Busch said. “I actually had a couple fans ask me: ‘Hey, you’re not 18 anymore. You’re 8. What should we do with our tattoos?’ I told them: ‘You can put the [dates] underneath it, from 2008 to 2022, or take the 1 and make it the new Cup Series trophy. You could have the 8 next to it.'”
Busch doesn’t run his Cup number everywhere. In lower divisions, he runs the No. 51 — an ode to Rowdy Burns, a character in his favorite movie growing up, “Days of Thunder.” Busch’s son, Brexton, runs the No. 18B, and Busch has noticed other drivers’ children doing the same.
“Kyle [Larson] was always No. 1 when he grew up,” Busch said. “I don’t know why he was No. 1, but now that his kid’s racing, Owen, he’s 01. I think it’s like the ‘little one.’ But I think they also did it because his initials are ‘O,’ which is a zero, and ‘L,’ which is a one.”
“I was number 1K,” Larson told ESPN. “I didn’t pick that number. My dad did, and it just became my number. The original go-kart we bought was the 1. Rather than changing the number, we just threw a ‘K’ on it.”
Just like his dad, Larson picked Owen’s number.
“There are a few reasons,” Larson said. “My dad’s hero growing up was LeRoy Van Conett. He drove the 01 sprint car. My dad owned a dirt midget that he would run people at the Chili Bowl [Nationals] with, and it would be the 01. When I started owning my own midget for the Chili Bowl, somebody already had the 1K.
“I was like, ‘Well, I’ll just use the 01.’ I really liked it. I won both Chili Bowls that I ran as the 01, and not many people I know of have run an 01. So when Owen started racing, I was like: ‘We’ll make it 01.’ It kind of sounds like ‘Owen’ — ‘O-wen,’ ‘Oh-one.'”
Larson drives the No. 5 Cup car, just like Busch did almost two decades ago. When Larson joined Hendrick Motorsports, the team asked what number he wanted. He responded: “Whatever you want to give me.”
“I wouldn’t say, ever, do I feel like I own that number over anybody else who’s been the 5,” Larson said. “In dirt racing, you can share a number with somebody. You just have to have a letter separating it. In NASCAR, nobody can have the same number as you.
“So I think in NASCAR, for the time you’re in the car, that’s your number. Hopefully, you have a lot of success and people remember you. Like Kyle Busch, I think of him as 18. If he wins tons of races and more championships in the 8, it could sway what I remember him as.”
Larson has had a lot of numbers, including 1K, 01, 83V, 99 and 71. The Nos. 5 and 57 are special because he runs them now, and because 5/7 ended up being his daughter’s birthday. But he’ll run anything, often without a preference.
There’s just one exception.
“If I could hand select a number and be 1K in the Cup Series, I would love that,” Larson smiled. “That would be my number.”
Busch didn’t hand select the No. 8, but the more he wins in the car, the more it feels like his own, he said. It was also a bit of fate.
“My son’s birthday is 5/18,” Busch said. “The 5 and 18 were my first two Cup Series numbers, and it’s 51 and 8 now. It’s kind of ironic how things — and numbers — work out sometimes.”
ATLANTA — No major decisions were made regarding the future format of the 12-team College Football Playoff on Sunday, but “tweaks” to the 2025 season haven’t been ruled out, CFP executive director Rich Clark said.
Sunday’s annual meeting of the FBS commissioners and the presidents and chancellors who control the playoff wasn’t expected to produce any immediate course of action, but it was the first time that people with the power to change the playoff met in person to begin a review of the historic expanded bracket.
Clark said the group talked about “a lot of really important issues,” but the meeting at the Signia by Hilton set the stage for bigger decisions that need to be made “very soon.”
Commissioners would have to unanimously agree upon any changes to the 12-team format to implement them for the 2025 season.
“I would say it’s possible, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not,” Clark said on the eve of the College Football Playoff National Championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. “There’s probably some things that could happen in short order that might be tweaks to the 2025 season, but we haven’t determined that yet.”
A source with knowledge of the conversations said nobody at this time was pushing hard for a 14-team bracket, and there wasn’t an in-depth discussion of the seeding process, but talks were held about the value of having the four highest-ranked conference champions earn first-round byes.
Ultimately, the 11 presidents and chancellors who comprise the CFP’s board of managers will vote on any changes, and some university leaders said they liked rewarding those conference champions with byes because of the emphasis it placed on conference title games.
Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, the chair of the board of managers, said they didn’t talk about “what-ifs,” but they have tasked the commissioners to produce a plan for future governance and the format for 2026 and beyond.
Starting in 2026, any changes will no longer require unanimous approval, and the Big Ten and the SEC will have the bulk of control over the format — a power that was granted during the past CFP contract negotiation. The commissioners will again meet in person at their annual April meeting in Las Colinas, Texas, and the presidents and chancellors will have a videoconference or phone call on May 6.
“We’re extremely happy with where we are now,” Keenum said. “We’re looking towards the new contract, which is already in place with ESPN, our media provider, for the next six years through 2032. We’ve got to make that transition from the current structure that we’re in to the new structure we’ll have.”
Following Sunday’s meeting, sources continued to express skepticism that there will be unanimous agreement to make any significant changes for the 2025 season, but a more thorough review will continue in the following months.
“The commissioners and our athletic director from Notre Dame will look at everything across the board,” Clark said. “We’re going to tee them up so that they could really have a thorough look at the playoff looking back after this championship game is done … and then look back and figure out what is it that we need.”
ATLANTA — ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Sunday that the league will have conversations among coaches and athletic directors about whether to make changes to its conference championship game format.
The conversations are a result of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, and ensuring conference champions and the teams that play in conference championship game remain important.
This past season, SMU entered the ACC championship game as the regular-season champion but lost to Clemson in the ACC title game and had to sweat it out before selection day before earning a spot in the 12-team field.
Phillips said the ACC could consider giving its regular-season champion a bye, and have the teams that finish second or third in the league standings play in the ACC championship game.
He said another possibility is having the top 4 teams play on the final weekend of the regular season: first place versus fourth place, and second place vs. third place, with the winners playing the following weekend in the ACC championship game.
Phillips said he will have conversations with league head coaches on a conference call next week to get their feedback on the plan — specifically pointing to comments SMU coach Rhett Lashlee made leading up to the game in which he indicated the Mustangs might be better off not playing to protect its spot in the field.
Phillips also said these conversations will continue at the league’s winter meetings next month in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he has mentioned this is a topic among league athletics directors.
“The conference championship games are important, as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips said. “Do you play two versus three? You go through the regular season and whoever wins the regular season, just park them to the side, and then you play the second-place team versus the third-place team in your championship game. So you have a regular-season champion, and then you have a conference tournament or postseason champion.
“That’s one of the options, depending on how you treat the conference champions, or that championship game, you may want to do it different.
“I have alluded to that in some of our every-other-week-AD calls, and these are some of the things moving forward. We want to have a recap of the regular season, postseason, and what do we think moving forward?”
Pittsburgh Pirates CEO Travis Williams said the organization is committed to winning but declared to frustrated fans that owner Bob Nutting will not sell the team.
Williams addressed fans’ frustration over Nutting’s ownership Saturday during a Q&A session at the Pirates’ annual offseason fan fest.
As Williams was responding to the first question, one fan in attendance shouted, “Sell the team,” prompting some applause from the audience. At that point, several fans started chanting, “Sell the team!”
Greg Brown, the Pirates’ longtime television play-by-play announcer, asked the fans to stop the chant and to “be respectful.” Another fan then asked Williams, who was seated next to Pirates general manager Ben Cherington and manager Derek Shelton, why Nutting was not in attendance.
“We know, at the end of the day, this is all passion that has turned into frustration relative to winning,” Williams said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I think the points that you are making in terms of ‘Where is Bob?’ That’s why he has us here, we’re here to execute and make sure that we win.”
Williams added that Nutting, who has owned the Pirates since 2018, was scheduled to attend the event and interact with fans at some point later Saturday.
“To answer your immediate question that you said earlier, Bob is not going to sell the team,” Williams said. “He cares about Pittsburgh, he cares about winning, he cares about us putting a winning product on the field, and we’re working towards that every day.”
Nutting has been widely criticized by fans and local media in recent years as the Pirates have toiled at or near the bottom of the National League Central standings.
The Pirates went 76-86 last season en route to their fourth last-place finish in the past six seasons. They have not finished with a winning record since 2018, have not reached the playoffs since 2015 and have just three postseason appearances since 1992.
“We know that there is frustration, frustration because we are not winning, with the expectations of winning,” Williams said. “At the end of the day, that’s not due to lack of commitment to want to win.”
Spurred by the arrival of ace pitcher Paul Skenes, the reigning NL Rookie of the Year, the Pirates were 55-52 at the trade deadline last season before a 21-34 free fall through the final two months dropped Pittsburgh to last in the NL Central.
“We can just look at last year,” Williams said. “It was a big positive going through the middle of the season, we were going into August two games above .500, but unfortunately we had a tough run in August and that tough run in August took us out of the hunt for the wild card. … From myself to Ben to Derek to lots of other people that are here today and throughout the entire organization, but that’s not for a lack of commitment or desire to win whatsoever.
“That’s from the top all the way down to the bottom of the organization. We are absolutely committed to win; what we need to do is find a way to win.”