Jack Roush and Rick Hendrick field the dominant two teams in Sprint Cup racing and have done so for many years now. Oh, Joe Gibbs and his sometimes volatile mix of drivers win a bunch of races, Roger Penske finds the occasional victory and Richard Childress isn’t exactly ready to throw in the towel just yet, but year in and year out, Roush and Hendrick teams dominate the big show.

The drivers for these two owners have won five of the last six Cup championships and a combined 10 since 1995. Last year the two teams, led by Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson, won 19 of 36 points-paying races. In 2007 the two superteams won 25 of 36, with every driver from both squads — with the exception of rookie David Ragan — posting at least one Cup win. Matt Kenseth, driving for Roush, won the first two Cup races this season and Jeff Gordon, an HMS driver his entire career, currently leads the point standings.

And as our friends Sonny and Cher used to warble, “And the beat goes on …”

The beauty of Cup racing in the days of yore was that on any given Sunday anyone could win. This year, if anyone other than a Roush or Hendrick driver (or that pesky Kyle Busch, whom Hendrick introduced to Cup racing) wins it has to be considered a bit of an upset.

Rick Hendrick has quietly usurped top dog honors at Chevy from Richard Childress and Dale Earhardt, Inc. (RIP), though the founders of those organizations pre-date Rick’s involvement with the sport by a decade or more. With Gordon, Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin in the fold, only Hendrick’s legendary management style can keep an epic cockfight from breaking out with so many roosters in the henhouse. His 175 Cup victories to date are a testament to that.

Likewise Jack Roush and his boys are carrying the flag for Ford. Roush is from an engineering background but has enjoyed success in drag and road course racing (most notably the Trans Am Series) before he decided to get his feet wet in the Cup Series. A fortuitous pairing with Martin (now, ironically driving for Hendrick) helped Roush make a big splash and contend for race wins and titles very quickly. In those days, Robert Yates and Bill Elliott were Ford’s standard-bearers but they’ve gone by the wayside. Roush is now king when it comes to the Blue Oval brigade, the only A-class organization left in the fold. The smaller Ford teams are but pilot fish that circle the great white shark that is Roush and his 115 Cup victories.

Chevy and Ford. Roush and Hendrick. It would seem the two should be archenemies as neither likes to lose (particularly to one another). But aside from some occasional bickering by Roush about how the Chevys have an unfair advantage or HMS is cheating, the two seem to consider one another as worthy adversaries. Both have stated on numerous occasions that racing against the other organization is what makes them try that much harder to do their absolute best. Both men are American success stories, self-made millionaires, not old money, that seem to enjoy their competition for King of the NASCAR mountain a lot more than all the other teams seem to enjoy being considered afterthoughts. There are fans that can’t stand either or both of them, but it’s hard to argue with their success.

Despite the many differences between the two, these men seem more alike than dissimilar. Both have enjoyed seasons when it seemed no one could beat them. Both have struggled at times against overwhelming expectations but rallied back to fight another year. Both are willing to devote endless resources, blood, sweat and tears to be sure that they continue to dominate. And both have decided, despite their on-track successes, that neither was going to put up with the antics of one or another of the Busch brothers.

At the end of the season Roush and Hendrick face very different scenarios, though. Roush is the only team-owner who will admit that he runs five Cup teams: the No. 6 of Ragan, the No. 17 of Kenseth, the No. 16 of Greg Biffle, the No. 26 of Jamie McMurray and the No. 99 of Edwards. Officially, Hendrick has just four: the No. 88 of Earnhardt Jr., the No. 24 of Gordon, the No. 48 of Johnson and the No. 5 currently driven by Martin.

Under NASCAR mandate no team owner may field more than four teams in the Cup Series starting in 2010, meaning Roush must divest himself of one team. It may seem that given the fact he hasn’t won a race to date, Ragan and the 6 team would be the odd men out. But given the recent support of high-dollar backer UPS, and the fact that the 6 car was Roush’s original team, I wouldn’t count on that. Roush has a habit of finding diamonds in the rough and sticking with them until they succeed. Biffle, Edwards and Kenseth weren’t exactly household names when tapped to drive in the big leagues. People thought Roush was insane to bring Kurt Busch straight from the Truck Series to Cup without a few years of Busch Series experience, but the duo went on to claim a title before their acrimonious split.

Therefore, if I were McMurray, I’d be damned sure to win some races and make the Chase this year or start looking for an open seat for 2010.

Technically Hendrick meets the letter of the law NASCAR has imposed, but here’s the rub: the alliance between Stewart-Haas Motorsports and Hendrick’s organization might be a little too incestuous for some to stomach — most especially Roush. With Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman, two high profile and successful drivers, the Hendrick satellite organization is going to draw some curious, if not envious, glances.

Stewart’s team runs Hendrick engines, Hendrick chassis and has Hendrick’s shop hang the bodies. About the only thing Stewart brings to the table is those Goodyear tires he likes so well and a different desert menu for the media tour. Hell, last year Johnson even referred to Stewart as “my teammate for next year,” after a hard-fought battle between the duo. (I am sure that Johnson has since been dragged back into the lab and his voice chip re-programmed.)

The fact that Hendrick runs six teams is lost only on the most dimwitted (which might explain why Brian France and Mike Helton haven’t caught on yet), especially since it doesn’t seem Stewart has the ability to run anything other than his mouth (I’m sure his imprisoned partner is a great help in that regard). If NASCAR does indeed stick to its guns and enforces the “four team maximum” rule next year, my guess is Roush is going to be leading the big brass band pointing out the eerie parallels between Hendrick’s team and the de facto Stewart organization.

Likely, Hendrick will shoot back that Roush himself has some ties with Doug Yates’ organization (Yates Racing) and the Wood Brothers. But those organizations aren’t often running up front and the drivers they employ, outside of a semi-retired Bill Elliott, aren’t as high profile as either Stewart or Newman.

Yes, it would seem Hendrick is prepared to meet the letter, if not the intent, of the new rules. And that could get ugly. It’s never pleasant when rules enforcement goes beyond NASCAR’s corporate headquarters and into a court of law, but that’s where I see this heading.

This may be a battle NASCAR wants to back away from. Back when the Dow Jones was at 14,000, gas was a buck fifty a gallon, and even poor credit risks could get a mortgage on a $350,000 home they now expect my tax dollars to keep out of foreclosure, the idea of more diversity in ownership was a noble goal. Financial types who saw the booming popularity of NASCAR and the huge sums spent by wealthy corporations to back teams with even modestly successful records wanted to get in the game in part because they were making more money than they knew what to do with (paging George Gillett, George Gillett to the courtesy phone please…). Well here’s the 411: NASCAR isn’t booming anymore, it’s contracting. A lot of high-dollar sponsors that were once integral to the Cup Series are on the ropes, most notably the Big Three auto manufacturers, who are laying off workers at alarming rates. The financial types have seen their fortunes evaporate like smoke while even a well-qualified buyer is lucky to be able to land a loan to buy a three-year old Hyundai. While there were once crowds banging at the door to get into the game, there is now an unseemly herd heading to the exits, wallet ablaze with what little cash they have left.

The new boom in team owners seems to be among two groups. First you have unemployed former Cup drivers who never made it to the top tier, hoping and praying their ragtag operations of laid off workers from the big teams can somehow make the show and earn enough purse money to make the next race — even if they have to live on hot dogs and boiled white rice all week to do so. Then you have a more cynical group of team owners who don’t even have a full crew or a spare set of tires, hoping the decreasing amount of full-time teams will allow them to qualify for the race so their entrants can drive a few laps and park the cars to claim the big checks for finishing at the back of the pack (and hopefully turn a profit if their driver doesn’t get wrecked on the first lap).

Given the rules in place that don’t allow adjustments to the cars between qualifying and the race itself, some of those more cynical teams are stealing starting spots from guys like Jeremy Mayfield and Joe Nemechek who have genuine, if Mickey-Rooney-ish, “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” pipedreams of building a competitive organization.

In this environment does NASCAR genuinely want to disband fully-funded (given proven track performance credentials), competitive teams with name drivers who might actually contend for wins to allow in a few more “start and park” charlatan organizations? Given current economic circumstances, it might behoove the sanctioning body to put team limitations on the backburner until economic reality allows more competitive teams to show up week-in and week-out.

Yes, my thinking has changed radically on this issue over the last few years. While I’d love to see another Alan Kulwicki get in the game and win a title against all odds, I am stricken with an occasional bout of realism. The rules and stakes have changed since Kulwicki made his quixotic charge at a championship. I never thought I’d want to protect the rights of three or four teams to dominate the sport, but I guess that worked out in the ’70s and early ’80s, when the racing was fine. Of course, I never thought I’d be happy to pay only two bucks a gallon for regular gas, either.

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