After Kenseth’s suspension, NASCAR could use its set of unwritten rules

In its quest to remain relevant during football season, NASCAR foisted a playoff system upon the public. Now it has foisted drivers smacking into one another on the track upon the public, and the handing down of dramatic penalties.

In defense of NASCAR, stock car drivers have been running into one another on the track for a long time. The biggest difference is that when the races mostly were shown on two-week tape delay on "Wide World of Sports," they usually settled disputes in the infield shadows after the checkered flag fell.

They used fists, not bumpers.

Two weeks ago, when a young hotshot driver named Joey Logano tried for many laps to pass a veteran driver with a prickly disposition named Matt Kenseth for the lead, Kenseth blocked him. The young hotshot ultimately tired of being blocked. He used his chrome horn to nudge the prickly veteran out of his way.

The people in NASCAR's infamous hauler where discipline is meted out said this was acceptable, because the battle between the hotshot driver and the prickly veteran was for the lead. This is what NASCAR meant when it decreed "Boys, have at it" after TV ratings dropped a few cylinders.

So last week, Kenseth got even. He nudged Logano into the wall, and it was a hard nudge, when the young hotshot was leading. Tore them racecars right up, as the commentators say.

But NASCAR indicated straight away this was not an eye for an eye, because Logano was leading, running for the championship, and Kenseth was running 10 laps down, about as far out of the championship as one with a decent sponsor can get.

On the replays, you can see the fans in Martinsville, Va., cheering wildly for Kenseth. When it comes to prickly veterans nudging young hotshots into the wall, NASCAR fans will cheer for the prickly veteran every time.

But when these transgressions occur in the other sports, except perhaps for hockey, the sanctioning body must frown on them and try not to wink, because fisticuffs and the massaging of fenders generate interest and publicity and oodles of Internet clicks.

NASCAR gave Kenseth a two-race suspension. Big whoop. It's not like he was going to win the championship, anyway.

(In a related note, Danica Patrick tried to intentionally wreck a driver named David Gilliland on Sunday. She missed and spun herself out. NASCAR still fined her $50,000.)

This is when it occurred to me that perhaps NASCAR needs unwritten rules, like they have in baseball.

See, there's going to be retribution for Jose Bautista flipping his bat after hitting that big home run in the playoffs, regardless of how cool it might have looked on TV. But it wasn't going to be the next day, had there been a next day.

It might happen in spring training; it might happen during a midweek game in April or May when one team or the other is ahead 7-2.

Had there been a game the next day, it would not have happened then. Sometimes when you try to plunk a guy in the ribs, you miss, and the guy could wind up on the disabled list. That would be messing with the championship.

When NASCAR suspended Kenseth — it waited until Tuesday, probably because people still were talking about the Royals winning the World Series on Monday, and there was another football game that night — messing with the championship was mentioned.

After the news got out, driver Denny Hamlin, Kenseth's teammate, said NASCAR does have a book of unwritten rules.

"Matt was policing the driver code, in my opinion." Hamlin said. "When someone does you wrong, they have an opportunity to defuse the situation by a phone call or talking to you at the race, any kind of thing like that. Or even through the media they can say they made a mistake.

"I feel like none of that happened … and that probably frustrated Matt."

But if there is a book of unwritten rules, it would appear not all drivers are on the same page.

"Every driver has a different code," Brad Keselowski, another young hotshot, said via the Fox Sports Race Hub. "You can't go off of driver codes because one driver's code is different than another driver's code, and they're going to clash."

Joey Logano supposedly was in Las Vegas on Tuesday, doing something with sponsors at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Would he be available to the media? He would not, I was told. I have a feeling if NASCAR needed to sell some tickets, Logano might have been available.

Anyway, a lot of stock car drivers have been offering a lot opinions on Logano v. Kenseth, and vice versa. (More free publicity for NASCAR.) I like this one best, expressed by old and grizzled — and now finally retired, I think — Mark Martin on his Twitter account:

"What's wrong with a good old fashioned (expletive) whipping? I felt like if I had one coming that was a better option than tearing up cars."

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski