Everybody loves a winner ... NOT!

Here’s a little quiz for you – what do Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson have in common? The answer is not all the wins, the poles and the multiple championships. Despite all that success, there is something else that all four of us have in common.

Along the way for all four of us have been booed and hated by the fans. Back in the late 1970’s and through most of the ‘80’s I was anything but a fan favorite. My NASCAR Hall of Fame buddy, Cale Yaroborough, nicknamed me Jaws because I used to run my mouth as fast as my car.

Now the old guard – Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Cale and the rest – didn’t like that. That’s not how things were done in NASCAR at the time. I’ve always said I just wanted a piece of the pie. I wanted the attention they were getting. I wanted to be the King but to be the King you had to beat the King. So when I started beating Richard, David, Cale, Bobby and the rest, it didn’t go over well at all.

You new fans to our sport may not know this, but I won so much that folks were having T-shirts made that said “Anybody but Waltrip.” At driver introductions the boos would rain down from the stands when my name was announced. I won too much, I talked too much and my competitors and all the fans disliked me with a passion.

NASCAR was in a transition period when I came along. Corporations for the first time that weren’t beer or automotive related were bringing big money into the sport. My first big sponsor, Gatorade, fell into that category. They had flashy paint schemes and a new way of marketing their product our sport hadn’t seen before.

NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. had turned over the reins to his son, Bill France Jr. Here came R.J. Reynolds into our sport with their Winston brand as our title sponsor of the Cup series. Racetracks were being updated and upgraded as hundreds of millions of gallons of paint of Winston’s now famous red and white colors were used at NASCAR tracks all over the United States.

Then about midway through the 1980’s a guy came along who took the heat off me from the fans and his name was Dale Earnhardt. Now you have to remember that before he was our beloved seven-time champion, Dale was rough. Dale would run over you. He would wreck you for really no good reason other than you were in his way. You’ve heard me mention before his “You hit me once – I’ll hit you twice” mentality – that was just his driving style.

Earnhardt was one tough customer. Well that rubbed the competitors and the fans the wrong way. There was no gray area when it came to The Intimidator – you either loved him or hated him, there was no in-between. Dale also won too much. People booed Dale. He was very unpopular. Trust me, I knew exactly what he went through.

Then in 1992 here comes this kid named Jeff Gordon. He was young. He was good looking. He was phenomenal behind the wheel. He came along again when our sport was in another transition period. Huge sponsorship dollars from corporate America started pouring into NASCAR teams. Now in addition to drivers, the crew chiefs and even team members were signing contracts and getting endorsement deals. The tracks began building more seats as fast as they could. Gordon’s bunch even dawned the era of a dedicated pit crew that did nothing but pit the car on Sundays. That was something our sport had never seen before.

Dale nicknamed Jeff “Wonder Boy” and Jeff started turning NASCAR on its ear. He won too much. Win after win, pole after pole was racked up by that No. 24 DuPont car. Madison Avenue fell in love with him, and he got big endorsement deals. Gordon then experienced the same thing Earnhardt and I lived through. The fans hated him. He was too perfect they said. He was too successful. Jeff was taking us, what was by then the Old Guard, on and beating us.

I can still remember when I started hearing Dale getting booed more at driver introductions than I did. Now here I was hearing Jeff get booed more than Dale. Again, I knew exactly how Jeff felt.

I’ve always loved irony, so how ironic was it that the guy who then took the black hat from Jeff was actually his own teammate? Jimmie Johnson hit the NASCAR Cup scene with a bang. He won three times his rookie year. The wins didn’t stop and the championships started piling up. Jimmie aimed for the NASCAR record books and didn’t miss.

Yarborough won three consecutive Cup championships in the 1970’s. That was a record no one ever felt would be broken. I tried really hard to do it. Since Cale won his three in a row driving for Junior Johnson, I wanted to win three since I was driving for Junior. After taking the crown in 1981 and 1982, I came close to duplicating Cale’s feat but fell 47 points short to Bobby Allison in 1983.

Folks, Jimmie Johnson obliterated that record.

First, Johnson tied Cale with three championships in a row. He then owned the record with four championships in a row. If one thought the bar couldn’t go any higher, Jimmie just laughed that off and now has five CONSECUTIVE Cup championships.

Just like the other three of us had experienced, Johnson was in the same boat. The fans built him up, but then when he won too much they started to tear him down. They said he was too vanilla. Just like they did to Gordon, they said Johnson only won because of his crew chief and the deep pockets of car owner Rick Hendrick.

To this day that young man has yet to receive the credit and adulation he deserves. People ask me all the time if Johnson can win six championships in a row. I don’t know but why couldn’t he? For the past five seasons there has been no one able to knock him off the top of the mountain.

Will 2011 be any different?

Maybe it will be because there is a guy who has loved wearing the black hat in NASCAR for the past handful of years and he is gunning for the championship. He drives that No. 18 car and goes by the name of Kyle Busch.

When Busch came on the scene he was rough around the edges. Tony Stewart once said Kyle was like a dart without the feathers, you never knew where he was going to go. I’ve always said Kyle is the one guy who can go three-wide with himself.

Kyle is a lot like both Earnhardt and I. None of us was ever out there to win a popularity contest, we just wanted to win races and championships. Everything else took a back seat and didn’t matter. We didn’t mind ruffling feathers to get what we wanted. I swear Kyle drives like Dale and runs his mouth like me. I’ve always said the only difference between me and Kyle was back then, I would have 50,000 people booing me at driver introductions and in Victory Lane, Kyle now has 150,000.

We didn’t always say the most popular things and weren’t always politically correct. We sort of told it like it was and shot from the hip, not worrying about the consequences. That rubbed lots of people, specifically our competitors and fans, the wrong way. That was our style, and it worked for us. Now, Gordon and Johnson are a little different. They were a little smoother and more polished. They never came off arrogant or obnoxious like some of us had. It’s just how our sport has evolved. The days of big shiny belt buckles, cowboy hats and driving on Sunday with a hangover from Saturday night partying, gave way to pretty much a GQ look and workout regimes that would make a Navy SEAL proud.

One of things I like about Kyle is that he is a throwback to the old school way of things. I take so much grief from folks when I brag about something he has done on the racetrack, but you can’t ignore the God-given talent this young man has behind the wheel simply because you don’t like the guy.

Kyle just does things with a race car that are extraordinary. I see Kyle do things that Dale did back in the day. He is just that good and has that kind of car control. What really impresses me about Kyle is his versatility. He’ll drive a NASCAR Camping World truck on Friday night and win. Then he’ll climb into a NASCAR Nationwide car on Saturday afternoon and win. Come Sunday, it’s more of the same. He’ll climb behind the wheel of his No. 18 Toyota and as we saw Sunday in Michigan, he wins. That marks his fourth win this year in the Cup series alone.

You simply can’t ignore the fact that we are talking about three different kinds of vehicles, with three different teams and most impressively, three different crew chiefs. You can’t overlook how smart that young man is. He not only knows what he wants his Truck, Nationwide or Sprint Cup car to do, but he can communicate that to his crew chief and his team.

Trust me, Busch loves nothing more than when he wins the race to stand on his car and make his trademark bow to the fans as the boos pour down from the stands. What I find really interesting, is that there are now more and more fans cheering for Kyle. He is evolving as a driver, and the fans are smart enough to realize they are witnessing a really spectacular driver who only comes around in our sport every so often.

I wore the black hat until 1989 in The Winston. When Rusty Wallace spun me out off of Turn 4, it was like a light switch was flipped. I was no longer the bad guy. Heck, I even ended up winning something that Richard Petty had told me would never, ever happen and actually I did it twice – NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver in 1989 and 1990. How is that for ironic?

We all know that Dale became the beloved figured to the NASCAR Nation. As Jeff Gordon’s career evolved, the boos turned back to cheers. With his wife and kids, he has become a fan favorite and definitely a future NASCAR Hall of Famer. Gordon put himself again in the NASCAR record book this year, when he became NASCAR’s third all-time winningest driver with 84 wins. I might add that was a record that Allison and I held that folks also said would never be broken. I’ve said it before, I still believe Jeff could win 100 NASCAR Sprint Cup races before he hangs up his helmet.

I also think Johnson now knows how Gordon felt, when Jeff saw Jimmie drive off leaving Jeff in the dust every week. I think you are seeing that happening to Jimmie with Kyle Busch just like we saw Sunday in Michigan. Kyle just seemed to take that race over and Jimmie had to settle for second.

Actually I think a lot of guys right now are going to have to get comfortable with running second to Kyle. He’s just that good behind the wheel and you have to give the young man credit for trying to better his off-the-track persona. A lot of credit has to go to his wife Samantha. She’s helped round off those rough edges, just like my wife, Stevie, did with me. I think Coach Gibbs and his son J.D. have helped a ton in that area as well.

As we all know, with age comes maturity. I think Busch is trying hard to change the perception that folks have of him. I speak from experience when I say you can only wear the black hat so long. As you get older, you want that respect for what you’ve done behind the wheel. Like it was with me and you’ve even heard Jeff Gordon talk about it this year, when you have kids, you want them to see Dad in Victory Lane. You want them to hear the cheers and not the boos. Kyle is no different. Someday he’ll want that too when he and Samantha start a family.

I still maintain someday and yes I realize it probably won’t be anytime soon, but one day Kyle is going to be recognized, if not the best, then one of the best to ever race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series.

I get people asking me all the time why Kyle can’t be more like Mark Martin. Mark is a beloved driver who has earned the respect of his competitors and fans alike for what he has done behind the wheel as well as off the track. I answer it the same way every time. I will bet Kyle will be that, when he’s 52 like Mark is.