Years ago, I was in the garage at Darlington Raceway chatting with David Pearson, Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough. All three are among the greatest racers in NASCAR history. All three had long since retired as drivers, but all three had only recently given up trying to be Cup Series team owners, the experience having crushed them all financially.

Yaborough said to me, “You are looking at three NASCAR dinosaurs.”

Pearson laughed and replied, “But we’re doing better than the dinosaurs because we’re still here.”

When I asked them what they’d figured out that the dinosaurs didn’t, Allison explained, “We were smart enough to realize we were dinosaurs and got out of the damn way before we went extinct.”

On Thursday afternoon in a Charlotte courthouse, another NASCAR dinosaur got out of the damn way.

As an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR, filed by 23XI Racing, co-owned by Michael Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and Front Row Motorsports (FRM), began to grind its way toward the end of its second week, the two sides announced that they had reached a settlement.

As the finer details of the agreement were still being revealed into late afternoon, there was no doubt that the victory belonged to the teams over the sanctioning body because we already knew that their ultimate goal had been achieved. In the end, this was about their fight for NASCAR to make team charters, as close as stock car racing gets to stick-and-ball franchises, permanent — or as their attorney Jeffrey Kessler described it, “evergreen” — as opposed to a contract-to-contract model, renewed in conjunction with NASCAR’s massive media rights deals.

It is very difficult to find someone in the Cup Series paddock who does not believe this is the right move. In fact, every team in the Cup Series garage once stood with 23XI and FRM, although they eventually relented and were willing to let those two teams carry ahead with the fight alone. They won that fight, and as a result, so did every NASCAR team owner who is fortunate enough to have one of those 40 charters. No one calls this franchising, but that’s essentially what it now is, in line with the business model of nearly every other big league sport, such as Jordan’s longtime home, the NBA.

NASCAR lost that fight. As the trial slogged on, a defeat began to feel inevitable, for the same reason that Jordan and his team believed that the latest charter agreement, the one they refused to sign in September 2024, was unsatisfactory. A reason that everyone in that garage, including NASCAR’s commissioner and president, had already talked about behind closed doors — and in emails and texts that were revealed in and around the trial — but no one spoke about publicly until the lawsuit forced them to.

The door to the future was being blocked by a dinosaur.

Jim France is a good man, a brilliant businessman and someone who loves auto racing on a level that few can understand. But he also never wanted the job he now holds as NASCAR’s CEO and chairman. His father, Bill France, originated the position after he oversaw NASCAR’s foundational meetings in 1948. His older brother, Bill France Jr., took over those duties from their father in the early 1970s and ruled the sport for three decades with a highly respected iron fist. His heir was his son Brian, whose tenure at the helm was tumultuous at best and ended prematurely in 2018.

Through it all, legendarily introverted Jim France was happy to remain in the background, racing sports cars and working in the racetrack ownership division while enjoying much sway in the NASCAR boardroom without any of the public spotlight that his father and brother both so loved and his nephew so loathed.

But when Brian France stepped down and NASCAR’s leadership flowchart was unexpectedly detoured, it ran directly over Jim France’s desk, whether he wanted it or not. “The Steves,” NASCAR commissioner Phelps and president O’Donnell, have been the faces of that leadership, a constant paddock presence as they meet with the media and their teams. But both have always been quick to politely remind that whatever decisions they made or moves they pondered, all went through the family first, being Jim, niece Lesa France Kennedy and her son Ben.

That was clear to everyone in the sport when it came to the introduction of charters in 2016, a concept created in conjunction with team owners to help meet their financial demands. It became even clearer that everything ran through France when the latest charter agreement tug-of-war took place over the two years leading into the current agreement.

As was revealed in court, NASCAR’s most powerful team owners pleaded with France personally to make their case for a more favorable charter agreement. When asked about those meetings this week, France testified that he considered them all great friends, but he was unmoved by their pleas.

As was also revealed in court, the people who worked for France were frustrated by their repeated attempts to get him to greenlight the compromises they had reached with those owners but were rebuffed by a man they were obviously referring to in text messages such as “1996 … dictatorship,” although they refused to identify that as France during their time on the stand.

At some point, during all of that, Jim France finally realized that, no, this isn’t 1996, when his brother had the sport picking up speed toward an unparalleled decade of growth. Nor is it 1966, when his father was building and collecting the portfolio of speedways that are still the backbone of NASCAR and the France family fortune. This isn’t even 2016, when charters were born.

Instead, we are staring into 2026. Today’s world is an open book. There are no secrets. No one knows that better than NASCAR and its race teams, having had 77 years of a closed-door/closed-ledger way of doing business laid bare during this trial. For the first time, we now know how much teams and their drivers make — and lose — and we know how much cash flows through the sanctioning body’s Daytona HQ and into the France family’s bank accounts.

And when it comes to collateral damage, race fans are rightfully incensed that the commissioner of NASCAR called Richard Childress, who teamed up with Dale Earnhardt to win six Cup titles, a “stupid redneck.” We now know that Joe Gibbs, a three-time Super Bowl-winning coach and five-time Cup Series champion owner, was moved to tears when he called Jim France to say “Don’t do this us!” and was told it was his fault in part because spending habits on his team were reckless. The France family now knows how displeased their lieutenants have been. Hell, I didn’t know that Hamlin believes that I’ve spent my entire career being scared of NASCAR people until he tweeted it on the eve of the trial.

Nothing says the holiday season like a vicious family fight. An airing out of long-simmering familial grievance that steps and then resteps over a line that had long been regarded as uncrossable. Your uncle finally spoke his mind about your mom’s drinking. Your sister finally got it off her chest that your spouse creeps her out. Your mother-in-law, caught up in the heat of the moment, called you a bad parent and then piled on by adding that you also never split the check at family dinners.

So, once that clash has ended and everyone is done calling out hard truths that everyone in the family already knew but no one dared say aloud, the only thing worse than the shouting is the awkward silence that follows.

Where do you go from there?

On Thursday morning, Jim France stood with Michael Jordan, surrounded by NASCAR executives, members of the France family, Hamlin, and an endless sea of lawyers. As the dinosaur and the GOAT were shoulder-to-shoulder on the steps of the very courthouse where they had just held a very public family fight, that’s the question that hovered over the scene like a storm cloud over the Daytona 500.

Some will say, as Jordan did after the settlement, that it was never personal, but strictly business. The business model of stock car racing is moving forward, and everyone seems to agree that’s the right plan of action. But hurt feelings never heal that quickly, do they?

Few communities in sports are like NASCAR. A relatively small group of people who travel together every weekend nearly year-round. It is genuinely like a family.

It’s never easy for any family to tell the patriarch he needs to hand over his car keys. You always hope he’ll realize he needs to do it first. On Thursday, Jim France did just that. Not every key on the chain, but certainly more than he, his father or his brother had ever given up before.

Hopefully, it wasn’t too late.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A federal antitrust case accusing NASCAR of being a monopolistic bully was settled Thursday after the stock car racing series agreed to make the charters at the heart of its business model permanent for its teams.

The lawsuit filed by Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports had shadowed NASCAR for more than a year. The retired NBA great pushed ahead, telling the jury he believed he was one of the few who could challenge the series.

Jordan, 23XI co-owner Denny Hamlin and Front Row owner Bob Jenkins joined NASCAR chairman Jim France as they stood together outside the courthouse. The group announced that the charters — at the heart of NASCAR’s revenue model — will be made permanent for all Cup Series teams. Both 23XI and Front Row Motorsports, the two plaintiffs, will get them back after racing unchartered most of this past season.

“Today’s a good day,” Jordan said.

The financial terms were not disclosed. An economist earlier testified that 23XI and Front Row were owed over $300 million in damages.

The settlement came on the ninth day of the trial before U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell, who set aside motions hearing for an hourlong sidebar. Jeffrey Kessler, attorney for 23XI Racing and Front Row, emerged from a conference room at the end of the hour to inform a court clerk, “We’re ready.” Kessler then led Jordan, Hamlin and Jenkins to another room for more talks.

23XI and Front Row filed their lawsuit last year after refusing to sign agreements on the new charter offers NASCAR presented in September 2024. Teams had until end of day to sign the 112-page document, which guarantees access to top-level Cup Series races and a revenue stream, and 13 of 15 organizations reluctantly agreed. Jordan and Jenkins sued instead and raced most of the 2025 season unchartered.

Both teams said a loss in the case would have put them out of business.

“What all parties have always agreed on is a deep love for the sport and a desire to see it fulfill its full potential,” NASCAR and the plaintiffs said in a joint statement. “This is a landmark moment, one that ensures NASCAR’s foundation is stronger, its future is brighter and its possibilities are greater.”

Bell told the jury that sometimes parties at trial have to see how the evidence unfolds to come to the wisdom of a settlement.

“I wish we could’ve done this a few months ago,” Bell said in court. “I believe this is great for NASCAR. Great for the future of NASCAR. Great for the entity of NASCAR. Great for the teams and ultimately great for the fans.”

All teams believed the previous revenue-sharing agreement was unfair, and two-plus years of bitter negotiations led to NASCAR’s final offer, which was described by the teams as “take it or leave it.” The teams said the new agreement lacked all four of their key demands, most importantly the charters becoming permanent instead of renewable.

The settlement followed eight days of testimony in which the Florida-based France family, the founders and private owners of NASCAR, were shown to be inflexible in making the charters permanent.

When the defense began its case Wednesday, it seemed focused more on mitigating damages than proving it did not act anticompetitively.

THE JOKES ARE easy enough to make between “old man” Haynes King and his position coach, the oldest man to ever win the Heisman Trophy.

Twenty-five years ago, when Chris Weinke took home the award as a 28-year-old senior, his age became a nonstop topic of conversation. Today, older quarterbacks dot the college football landscape, their advanced ages met with a collective shrug.

“Sometimes I try and mess with him and say, ‘I couldn’t quite catch you on the age, but I tried. I gave it my all,” the 24-year-old King said of Weinke, his quarterbacks coach at Georgia Tech.

Older players have been normalized, thanks to the transfer portal and the pandemic, which granted freshmen an extra year of eligibility if they wanted it. Nearly 40 quarterbacks from the 2020 class came back this year for one more season at the FBS level. Plus, with NIL and revenue sharing, some quarterbacks are opting to stay in college as opposed to leaving school for the NFL draft. And sixth-year quarterbacks like King and Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia entered the Heisman conversation this year. (Pavia was named a finalist.) Still, if more quarterbacks are 24 years old these days, nobody is quite as aged as Weinke was when he played.

“The landscape of college football has obviously changed,” Weinke says. “But that was a point of contention when I won it. When I walked into the room that evening when they were making the Heisman announcement, I didn’t think I was going to win it, because there was so much chatter that I didn’t deserve to win it because I was older.

“But I’ve got it now, and they can’t take it away.”

Perhaps the conversation around what Weinke did in 2000 at Florida State should be reframed. What made that season so remarkable had nothing to do with age, and everything to do with how he turned himself into a star after his college football career nearly ended. Twice.

FLORIDA STATE OFFENSIVE coordinator Mark Richt was sitting in his office in 1996, when then-coach Bobby Bowden came in with some news. At the time, Richt was closing in on getting a commitment from the top quarterback prospect in the country, Drew Henson. That is, until Bowden told him about a promise he had made to Weinke six years earlier.

Weinke had initially signed with the Seminoles in 1990, joining a quarterback room that included Brad Johnson, Casey Weldon and fellow freshman Charlie Ward. But he also had a lucrative offer to play baseball with the Toronto Blue Jays organization, after being selected in the second round of the MLB draft. Weinke had until classes started in late August to decide which sport he was going to play, so he opted to begin fall practice with Florida State while weighing his options.

He went through fall two-a-days, and with decision day closing in, Richt remembers one quarterback meeting in particular. To make sure his quarterbacks understood what he was teaching them, he would ask them questions.

Richt turned to Weinke as they watched tape and asked, “What coverage is this on this play?”

“Cover 3?” Weinke guessed.

“No.”

“Cover 1?

“No. It’s quarters coverage,” Richt said.

Weinke responded: “Whatever.”

“That was the day before school started,” Richt said. “I said, ‘I got a feeling this kid is going to leave and play pro baseball.'”

Sure enough, Weinke left. But Bowden told him if he ever decided to return to football, he would have a spot waiting for him at Florida State.

After six years of bouncing around the minor leagues and getting as high as Triple-A, Weinke decided to give up on baseball, but not playing sports entirely. He wanted to go back to football. Richt reminded Bowden that if they took Weinke, they would lose Henson.

“Well, I promised him if ever wanted to play football again, I’d let him come back,” Bowden told Richt.

Richt asked to speak with Weinke first.

“I was telling him all the rules and regs, I was telling him about [quarterback] Dan Kendra already on campus and when I’m done giving him my spiel to try to get him not to come, he says, ‘Hey coach, let me ask you one question. If I’m the best guy, will I play?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ He goes, ‘I’m coming.’ We lost the other quarterback to Michigan. I guess we came out OK with Weinke.”

Nobody quite knew what to expect when he arrived on campus as a 25-year-old freshman in 1997, but he quickly became one of the guys, in part because he had a large house off campus and threw his fair share of parties where all were invited.

The larger issue was that he arrived as a baseball player. Weinke had not picked up a football in six years.

Getting his form back would take time and reps. Lots and lots of reps. Former teammates and coaches described Weinke’s competitiveness, work ethic and relentless demeanor as driving forces. He would never settle for anything less than his best effort; and he expected the same from his teammates.

That is why he woke up before class started and went to watch tape with Richt. Why he organized every voluntary 7-on-7 workout and essentially made them mandatory. Because if someone failed to show up, he would go and find them and bring them out to the practice field. He developed such a great rapport with his receivers that he would be able to anticipate where they would be at any given time on the field.

“Our chemistry was like none other,” said Marvin “Snoop” Minnis, his leading receiver in 2000. “He knew what I was going to do before I did. He would have the ball to me before I even got out of my break, and as a receiver, you love that so you can react and make the move you need to make on the defender.”

Weinke played sparingly in 1997 but won the starting job in 1998. Things started well enough in the opener. Then in his second career start, at NC State, Weinke threw a school-record six interceptions, and the criticism began.

“I remember getting back to the house, we had an answering machine back then. The most brutal messages you could imagine, cursing and threats, and ‘You don’t need to play quarterback,'” said Jeff Purinton, who was working in the Florida State media relations department at the time and was one of Weinke’s roommates. “Even going to the store, people would talk trash. Chris just weathered it and used that as an opportunity to learn.”

Weinke rebounded from there, helping Florida State reel off eight straight wins. That last win, against Virginia, was nearly the last time he saw the field.

TOWARD THE END of the first half, Weinke got sacked and felt pain in his right arm. He initially thought he had a shoulder injury. Weinke went into the locker room at halftime, and as trainers began to lift off his shoulder pads, he had a sharp pain in his neck. He was fitted with a brace and underwent further testing.

When the doctor walked in to deliver the results, Weinke remembers asking, “Before you share any news, I just want to know one thing. Am I ever going to play college football again?”

“Well,” the doctor said. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

The doctor said Weinke needed surgery to insert a titanium plate into his neck after X-rays showed a chipped bone lodged against a nerve in a vertebra, ligament damage and a ruptured disc.

“Maybe the better news,” the doctor said. “You were a centimeter away from being paralyzed from the neck down.”

“Mom hears that, and dad hears that. They’re not real excited about me getting back out on the field,” Weinke says. “But they knew that burning desire inside of me that wanted to get back out there and be a part of the team. The doctors told me that I’d be stronger with a titanium plate in my neck, so I was going to do whatever it took. But those were probably the hardest seven months of my life.”

Weinke initially had complications post-surgery and had to be in bed for five weeks. He lost 30 pounds, and his throwing arm atrophied so severely that it became impossible for him to even lift a football. He had to teach himself again how to throw, starting first with a tennis ball. Throwing it 5 yards was a huge accomplishment. Seven hours a day, day after day, he rehabbed, steadily progressing, all the while unsure whether he would make it all the way back.

Then, there he was in the season opener against Louisiana Tech, completing 63% of his passes, throwing for 242 yards and two touchdowns. That was the start of an undefeated national championship-winning season in 1999, as Florida State went wire to wire as the No. 1 team in the nation.

Weinke opted to return for one more season, because he wanted to get Bowden another national championship. After throwing for 3,432 yards, 29 touchdowns and 15 interceptions as a junior and winning the title, Weinke became one of the Heisman front-runners headed into 2000.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, there is one play from that season that remains a part of Seminoles lore: Weinke to Minnis, 98 yards, in a 54-7 blowout win over Clemson in mid-November.

On the second series of the game, backed up near the goal line, Florida State ran what Bowden referred to as a “gym play” — one that was never practiced on the field, but rather behind closed doors inside the gym away from prying eyes. “Or spies,” Richt said.

Weinke dropped back deep into the end zone and faked a handoff to Jeff Chaney, turning his back to the defense and tucking the ball as if he no longer had it. Minnis had gone in motion and made the safety think he was blocking for a handoff, then took off down the middle. By the time Weinke delivered the ball, Minnis was wide open. Easy touchdown. Easy 54-7 win.

“He was so ice cold in that moment,” Minnis said. “The confidence that he had in the O-line to just stand there, then turn around and hit me for the touchdown. For him to make that fake as beautiful as he did and then put that ball on a dime just tells you how great Chris Weinke was and how deserving he was of that Heisman Trophy.”

There was another game that added to his legend: The regular-season final against the rival Gators. Weinke had missed the 1998 game in Gainesville because of his neck injury. Nothing would keep him from playing them in The Swamp in 2000. Not even the flu.

Weinke was so sick the night before the game, he stayed at the home of team doctor Kris Stowers so he would not be around the rest of the team in the team hotel. He rode with Stowers to the game on Saturday, and walked through all the tailgate lots on the way to the locker room. Trainers gave him an IV before the game started, and Weinke proceeded to throw for 353 yards and three touchdowns in the 30-7 win.

Florida State was well positioned to make it back to the national title game, and Weinke was also well positioned in the Heisman Trophy race. But as the weeks drew closer to the announcement of the Heisman finalists, critics waged a campaign against Weinke — saying his age should disqualify him from consideration. That angered his teammates.

“He dominated that year, and it had nothing to do with age,” Minnis said. Added running back Travis Minor: “When he got there, he wasn’t looking like a Heisman Trophy candidate or winner. He really put the work in. You saw the difference from when he first got there to when he had that Heisman Trophy season. He earned everything that he won.”

Florida State knew it had to start working on messaging with Heisman voters as the debate over his age raged on. Ultimately, school officials came back to one main point: It was hard to argue with the stats. Weinke had led the nation with 4,167 yards passing and 33 touchdowns and had the Seminoles playing in a third straight national championship game.

“He was playing baseball for six years. It wasn’t like he was throwing the football every day and training to be a starting college quarterback,” Purinton said. “The other part is he could have died when he broke his neck. There were two points in time where he had to go back and start football over again.”

Weinke said the narrative taking shape around his age “pissed me off.”

“I was playing college football, so if I’m playing college football, then I should be eligible to win any award that they’re giving out in college football,” Weinke said. “That was just a little motivating factor for me.”

Weinke ultimately made it to New York with fellow finalists Josh Heupel, LaDainian Tomlinson and Drew Brees. His teammates watched on television screens from the team banquet Florida State had scheduled for that night.

“Sitting in the Downtown Athletic Club coming out of a commercial break and them announcing your name will ring in my head till the day I die,” Weinke said.

Weinke beat out Heupel in one of the closest votes in Heisman history, taking a 76-point margin of victory. His teammates whooped and hollered for him back home. Weinke took the stage and said, “With apologies to Lou Gehrig, I feel like I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

WEINKE BEGAN COACHING 10 years after he won the Heisman. He first came to know King while working as an assistant at Tennessee in 2020. When King hit the portal in 2022, Weinke had moved on to Georgia Tech. His first call was to King.

“Playing quarterback is kind of tricky,” King says. “The stars have to align, whether it’s people around you and or how you’re playing. Even in my class, there were guys like Bryce Young and Anthony Richardson and C.J. Stroud, already in the league, and I’m still in college like Chandler Morris, Diego Pavia, Carson Beck. Everybody’s timeline is different.”

While the debate over his age has been left to the dustbin of history, what Weinke did that year may never be replicated. In an era of sport and position specialization, quarterbacks rarely play multiple sports at elite levels — let alone leave football behind for six years before coming back to it. In the 25 years since Weinke won the Heisman, Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State is perhaps the only notable quarterback to play baseball and then stick around in college football into his late 20s.

“To go through the things that I went through was clearly the road less traveled,” Weinke said. “Being an older guy and not playing football for seven years, then fulfilling a dream of playing for Coach Bowden, then breaking my neck, and coming back and giving Coach Bowden his first undefeated season, and ultimately having my name called for the Heisman Trophy, I just felt blessed.”