...When Earnhardt said he was heading elsewhere, retailers of NASCAR merchandise began canceling orders for Junior gear for fear of being saddled with excess inventory at the end of the year -- inventory for which they'd eat the cost if not sold.

Therefore, the production cost from those canceled orders filters back to Motorsports Authentics, which has manufactured umpteen million hats, T-shirts, die-cast replica cars, pup tents, flags, coffee mugs, trash cans, Aunt Betty's poker visor, toilet paper -- whatever it is they make.

And a lot of that stuff is Junior-centric. Dyer said that Junior carries 30 percent of the total merchandising market. That percentage escalates dramatically in some specific merchandising areas.

(Might just be me -- I'll be the first to admit not knowing jack about retail -- but it stands to reason they'll rally in 2008. All those Junior fans now need new stuff, no?)

This is just the latest testament to the Junior phenomenon, which seems to have infinite depth. The true indicator, it seems, is the annual Joyce Julius report, which measures return on investment for sponsors by applying the cost of a 30-second commercial spot to the total focused broadcast time the sponsor receives.

Get this: Earnhardt won just one race in 2006, yet according to the year-end Joyce Julius report, he garnered more than $183 million in clear, focused broadcast time for Budweiser. By contrast, Lowe's received $143.6 million in exposure from Jimmie Johnson's five-win championship season.

Sources with intimate knowledge of Budweiser's agreements tell me its agreement with DEI is not among the 10 most lucrative financial team agreements in NASCAR. There is a misconception that it's much larger because of Anheuser-Busch's unparalleled activation.

Nobody pumps a driver like Bud pumps Junior...