- 2 days ago
number 24
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Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
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00:01But Havlicek steals it! Havlicek stole the ball!
00:05Down goes Frasier! Down goes Frasier! Down goes Frasier!
00:11United Show Leachy!
00:13Police!
00:14The fans win!
00:15The fans win! The fans win!
00:22It's a fun move!
00:24They won their sixth NBA championship!
00:27It's a swing!
00:28This is going to be an all-round unbelievable!
00:32You don't believe what I just saw!
00:46Hello, I'm Chris Fowler for SportsCentury.
00:49When 21-year-old Jeff Gordon hit the testosterone-fueled Winston Cup Series full-time in 1993,
00:55he didn't swagger, bare his teeth, or even cuss.
00:59Lacking such requisite characteristics, Gordon was barely noticed.
01:03But after seven victories in 1995, and becoming the youngest NASCAR champion in 45 years,
01:10he had earned the respect of everyone, including the intimidator himself, Dale Earnhardt.
01:14Yes, sir.
01:15Not satisfied with mere acceptance,
01:17and move on to dominate the sport and change its image.
01:21I'm pretty sure my dad met this guy. He was working for a NASCAR.
01:28That's nice.
01:29Alright.
01:30Let's get someone knows.
01:34Jeff has been one of those people that changed what a race car driver is.
01:39If you looked at Richard Petty, you looked at Dale Earnhardt, you looked at Cale Yarborough,
01:44and then you look at Jeff Gordon, that's not the same picture.
01:49Jeff helped bring mainstream, young America into our sport.
01:56Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Gordon!
02:03In the Super-
02:07R.
02:08R.
02:10Hmph.
02:14Hmph.
02:16Pat Jeff Gordon.
02:17Mmm.
02:18I just love the way he gets in this car.
02:22Oh, that's smooth.
02:23Ooh, oh yeah.
02:25Hmph.
02:27He's a great driver, but he's also the kind of guy you can sell to my Street, your Street, Main
02:32Street, or Wall Street.
02:34Filling in for Redis Philbin who is on special assignment this morning,
02:37the one and only Jeff Gordon.
02:43When Jeff Gordon came in,
02:45he brought the mainstream American public with him.
02:49The NASCAR fan said,
02:50no, no, no, no, no.
02:52It's us against the world.
02:54We don't want Jeff Gordon bringing the world to our cult.
02:58And they resented the hell out of it.
03:01And then he started winning championships.
03:03And all of a sudden, he's winning a lot of money.
03:05He's got a beautiful wife
03:07and he's got a damn Learjet.
03:10Look at that motor coach.
03:11And he's driving a Corvette.
03:12Why, I don't think I like this guy.
03:15Gordon takes a look at it.
03:17Rusty down now, slams the door.
03:18Gordon on ahead.
03:19How about you beat him?
03:21Here comes Jeff Gordon to take the lead.
03:23He beat Dale Earnhardt.
03:24He beat Bill Elliott.
03:25He beat Rusty Wallace.
03:26And go on down the line.
03:28Every one of those drivers out there have fans.
03:30And Jeff Gordon, this kid, was beating them.
03:39He didn't talk like us.
03:40He's not from where we are.
03:42He's an open-wheel guy.
03:43And he's lucky.
03:44Why should we like him?
03:45People didn't think he had paid his dues.
03:48Everybody was watching what he was doing.
03:50But very envious of how much talent that he had.
03:53The success was coming.
03:55The money was coming.
03:56I mean, I think people perceived him to be different.
04:00Maybe because of that.
04:02Aloof, maybe.
04:03He knew he was an outsider.
04:06I also never had the feeling that he wanted to deal with it.
04:09He was in his motorhome.
04:10And nobody was invited.
04:13And hardly anybody ever showed up there.
04:15Deep down, drivers want to see the other guy fail.
04:17I don't care what anybody says.
04:18So when Jeff was coming in, we're all like, man, I hope he gets his butt kicked.
04:26With quiet efficiency, Jeff Gordon won Rookie of the Year honors in 1993.
04:32Over his first seven seasons, he averaged a victory in every five starts.
04:36Such early success did not endear the young poster boy to the old guard.
04:42Uh-oh, wonder who that is.
04:44I hear the dude.
04:45Right here.
04:45It's in the background.
04:48I can see it bothered him when he was introduced.
04:51The reaction from the fans was, hey, you've won too many.
04:54That can't be easy, you know, to be punished for being good.
04:59Here comes Zernard.
05:00He's all the way to the bottom.
05:01Almost in the grass.
05:03He drives up the racetrack.
05:05And Jeff Gordon will hit it.
05:06Dale was the old guard, the established champion.
05:09Jeff was the upstart.
05:11The guy was coming in and stealing Dale's thunder.
05:13This is what the fans thought.
05:15And this created, in their minds, a rivalry.
05:19Here goes the pass.
05:20Gordon making a move on the inside of Earnhardt.
05:23Oh, giant, looks.
05:26Back straightaway.
05:28Big trouble.
05:29Earnhardt out.
05:30Here was the new kid on the block.
05:32Appeared, you know, by Earnhardt school.
05:34Thought it appeared to be a little bit of a sissy.
05:36It was natural that Earnhardt was going to pick on him.
05:39He's contributed a lot with the engines, and we appreciate that.
05:44He would try to get in your head and try to mess with you.
05:48And then if that didn't work, he'd go to the media, you know, and he'd, you know, poke at you
05:53through the media.
05:55The first year that Jeff won the 600 over here was 1994, and he cried in victory circle.
06:01And Earnhardt wore that poor kid out.
06:04Called him a crybaby.
06:06It was the right story for this, which was in the process of going from regional, Earnhardt, to national, Gordon.
06:12From rough and tumble, Earnhardt, to polished and slick, Gordon.
06:18Dale.
06:19Great effort, man.
06:21Here's some milk.
06:25Their relationship really was like the old sheepdog-coyote cartoon, you know.
06:29They'd ride in together and then punch in, knock hell out of one another all day along the racetrack,
06:32and then go do business deals together at night.
06:36I can't say he took me under his wing, can't say we were best friends, but he was very good
06:41to me.
06:41I listened to what he had to say and asked him for advice.
06:45Even, you know, we're partners in a couple businesses together.
06:49Despite their mutual respect and partnership track, Earnhardt helped fuel a rumor that Gordon was gay.
06:56But in fact, when the newcomer was a rookie, he dated the 1993 Miss Winston Brooks.
07:02However, because NASCAR frowned on drivers dating the sponsor's spokesmodels, the couple kept their relationship a secret.
07:09Jeff told me, Earnhardt even came up to me one day, and I was gay.
07:14I rented the quote, and I've got a feeling that it started right there.
07:20There were people out there to get Jeff Gordon.
07:23There were people out there making shirts up.
07:26People were literally planning things on the internet.
07:29And the worst part was people would read it, instead of just laughing about it, people were going, is this
07:34true?
07:35That was definitely below the belt and certainly no reason for it.
07:40I'm, you know, proud to be heterosexual.
07:45That was always one I just laughed at.
07:48Success breeds contempt.
07:53He was so successful, so fast.
07:56This happened everywhere he went.
07:57Faced with constant resentment of his prodigious driving talent, Gordon learned early on to lock himself inside a protected bubble
08:06made it great.
08:10Jeff Gordon's first totally programmed race driver in the history of motorsports.
08:17And this was done by his stepfather.
08:22Jeff Gordon was born in Vallejo, California, on August 4th, 1971.
08:27When he was a year old, his mother, Carol, divorced his natural father.
08:31And in 1973, married John Bickford, an engineer who built mechanical devices to assist the handicapped.
08:37Bigford infused his love of racing in his stepson.
08:41Every other day, I would pick him up from school.
08:43We would drive 50 miles and we would practice.
08:46And he practiced until he would be so tired that he literally couldn't drive the car.
08:51John's pretty relentless.
08:53When you take a young child like Jeff, you know, five years old, you have to continually push them.
09:00And I supported that.
09:01We all did our own thing.
09:03He raised.
09:04My mom, she helped with the scoring and announcing in the tower.
09:08John, of course, was the mechanic and the patient person teaching him and guiding him.
09:14There's an endless number of reasons why you get to some place.
09:19But the one common denominator was John Bickford and me.
09:23Well, I've ran quarter midgets for about eight or nine years.
09:26And I've ran go-karts for about three or four years.
09:31And the go-karts, they really help you out on the dirt because, you know, you're sideways and on the
09:36pedal.
09:40Before he was even old enough to have a driver's license, Gordon had won hundreds of races and two national
09:46quarter midget titles against much older drivers.
09:49While the prodigy drew raves from some, others were skeptical.
09:53I can remember being at the racetrack until late at night because they always thought we were cheating and they
09:59wanted to tear apart the car.
10:01I know there was a lot of the older people that had a problem with a 13-year-old racing
10:05against them.
10:06And they just felt he didn't have the experience to handle a car.
10:09Ugly things were said about us.
10:13What kind of parents could we be?
10:14Because it was a dangerous sport.
10:16Look at that.
10:17He takes court to the wall, courts, backs the wall very hard.
10:21You're a child of abusers.
10:22You should be punished.
10:24He's too young.
10:25He's too small.
10:25He shouldn't be doing this.
10:27I was blocked from racetracks for a variety of liability reasons.
10:31We respected their wishes and we just moved elsewhere.
10:37In 1986, Gordon's family moved to Pittsburgh, Indiana, where, at 14, he could legally race 700-horsepower sprint cars.
10:46Raw, nasty, bucking broncos without roofs or fenders.
10:50Running 100 nights a year, Gordon became the family business.
11:08The steep trajectory of Gordon's career was pointing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a future in open-wheel racing.
11:16But in the summer of 1990, still without a sponsor, the 19-year-old climbed into a stock car and
11:22drove some laps at the Buck Baker Driving School in Rockingham, North Carolina.
11:27In one powerful instant, his life's focus would be changed forever.
11:31He called on the telephone and he said, sell everything.
11:34I found out what I want to do for the rest of my life.
11:37And I said, okay.
11:38I said, we'll go on stock car racing.
11:40He said, we'll go on stock car racing.
11:46He looked about 13 or 14.
11:48And I get out my briefcase and he gets out his briefcase and he opens it up.
11:52And I think there was a Nintendo Game Boy, a can of peanuts and a stock car racing magazine.
11:58I thought to myself, wow, is this kid really going to be the guy to drive this race car?
12:02With Ray Everham in the pit, Gordon lit up NASCAR's Busch Grand National Series in 1992, setting a record for
12:09poles with 11.
12:10And on the day of his first win in Atlanta, his furious, almost reckless driving style caught the eye of
12:16owner Rick Hendrick.
12:18The car was so out of control.
12:19I said, hey, watch this.
12:21He's going to bust himself open.
12:23Comes around and does it again and again.
12:24And I said, man, who is that?
12:27And they said, it's that Gordon kid.
12:29A year later, Gordon and Everham were on the Winston Cup circuit with a green light from Hendrick to build
12:35the car of their dreams.
12:37And the rookie from Indiana, it's Gordon to cross in first.
12:43Most rookies, they get to drive junk.
12:46Jeff was one of the first guys that stepped into top-notch equipment right off the bat.
12:50Ray Everham had probably, at that time, accumulated enough knowledge to be, I'm going to say, a full year ahead
12:58of everybody else in the garage area.
13:01When I said, here's what the car is doing, he knew how to make it better.
13:06It took me a little while to figure out, look, he's out there alone.
13:09He needs me to help him, give him information, calm him down, tell him it's going to be all right.
13:14Keep digging, keep digging.
13:15And as soon as I figured out how to do that, man, it was like a switch went off.
13:21Jeff Gordon, winner of the inaugural Brickyard Fortress.
13:26And he has now won 28 of the last 100 Winston Cup races.
13:31Jeff Gordon wins at Ronyham.
13:34After winning Winston Cup championships in 1990.
13:37Yeah, we went down to North Carolina to see that car.
13:43Just one of our stops in that trip.
13:46That 24 rainbow car.
13:49Five in 1997, Gordon won 13 races in 1998, including four in a row and 17 consecutive top five finishes
13:58on his way to another title.
14:00Young, rich and handsome, he appeared sickeningly perfect.
14:04The NASCAR fans who liked their heroes flawed, but all was not perfect inside the Gordon bubble.
14:11Obviously, when you're winning races and you're winning championships, there's supposed to be great happy times and everything.
14:18But as his mother, I could tell that he wasn't happy within himself.
14:24He wasn't himself.
14:31Jeff Gordon was always in a situation where there was a domineering person around him.
14:36It was John Bickford who taught him how to race, and he moves to Ray Everham.
14:40And then you had Brooke, who people saw as a very strong hand, a very strong image.
14:47Married in November of 1994, Jeff and Brooke Gordon were racing as a royal couple.
14:52They were young, and they were beautiful, and they loved each other, and they were going to take over the
14:58NASCAR world.
14:59I think she was a calming influence in his life.
15:03I know that she was a big influence as far as him going to church.
15:08Brooke cleaned him up and made him more appealing.
15:12And maybe they were private, and maybe they were secluded, but she was with him at the height of the
15:17making of Jeff Gordon.
15:18And she probably deserved credit for that.
15:21Hmm, hmm.
15:24Brooke wanted him to be a man and a husband and to stand up to his parents and not let
15:29them tell them what to do.
15:32But she had certain things that she wanted Jeff to do.
15:37Six months after his wedding, with success and fame making his financial affairs increasingly complex,
15:43Gordon hired a full-time business manager, essentially replacing his stepfather, John Bickford.
15:48For 20 years, they had chased the dream together.
15:52Now, on the brink of Gordon's first Winston Cup championship, they split painfully.
15:57That was a big strain on my family.
16:00My mom, my stepdad, myself.
16:02We didn't speak for a long time.
16:04We didn't get along for a long time.
16:06I only knew one thing, Jeff Gordon.
16:09It was a challenge for me to figure out who I was and what I was going to do and
16:13where did I fit in in the world.
16:16As years went by, I realized how important that they were to me.
16:19It was nice to really rekindle, rebuild that relationship back up.
16:23And I think it's probably better and stronger now than it's ever been.
16:29In September of 1999, with 47 wins in seven seasons, Gordon lost Everham when his crew chief became the leader
16:37of Dodge's NASCAR team.
16:39A month later, Gordon signed a lifetime deal with Hendrick Motorsports that gave him part ownership of the team.
16:45We had done everything that you could do in that sport, some of it two and three and four times.
16:50And a great opportunity came with Dodge to help start race teams from scratch.
16:54And I needed to know if I could do it.
16:56The fact is, I think Ray Everham had something to prove that it was Ray Everham.
17:01And I think Jeff Gordon had something to prove that it was Jeff Gordon.
17:04And I think that they've both proven that.
17:10If Jeff and Brooke Gordon were regulars in the media,
17:12they were increasingly absent from the racing community.
17:15In 1997, they moved to Florida from Lake Norman, outside the NASCAR capital of Charlotte.
17:23When Jeff was winning ten races in a year, he was hard to talk to.
17:29He was always in his motorhome, would never come out and hang out.
17:34He was a good husband.
17:35He did the things that you were supposed to do when you're being a good husband.
17:39And at times, I think he wasn't happy with all that that entailed.
17:44Now they move off.
17:46They've got a jet.
17:47They live in Florida.
17:48And people can say that Brooke influenced all of that.
17:52And I don't buy that.
17:53It takes two.
17:54And I think that's a lifestyle that Jeff wanted to live.
18:01On February 18th, 2001, Dale Earnhardt was killed during the Daytona 500.
18:07After watching the crash replays over and over,
18:10Gordon spent a sleepless night in deep reflection on his own life.
18:15You realize, you know, how precious life is and how quickly it can be taken away from you.
18:20It made me want to appreciate every day.
18:24It affected him a lot more than people realize.
18:28I think I saw him change in a lot of ways.
18:31Made him think deeper things about family and how he's living his life.
18:35He woke up one day and was like, I'm 30 and I'm not very happy with where I am,
18:41despite having all this around me.
18:43And he decided to make some changes.
18:45And I guess his marriage was a casualty of that.
18:52But in March of 2002, it was Brooke Gordon who sued for divorce,
18:57alleging that the marriage was, quote,
18:59irretrievably broken as a result of the husband's marital misconduct, end quote.
19:04Gordon denied the allegation and countersued,
19:07igniting 15 months of legal wrangling before a private settlement awarded Brooke millions.
19:12Then, in October 2003, Playboy magazine published nude pictures of exotic dancer Deanna Merriman,
19:19who proclaimed she had an 11-month affair with Gordon while he was married.
19:23He didn't like a woman going in Playboy and telling all.
19:27And it turns out Jeff's not perfect.
19:29He's not the squeaky clean goody two-shoes everyone thought he was.
19:33I'm driving the car on Sunday, and on Monday I'm in a deposition or in a room filled with lawyers.
19:39It did affect me, definitely, in my life and on the racetrack.
19:44I'm very thankful to have that out from underneath me now.
19:47Nobody knew who or what Jeff Gordon was, including Jeff Gordon,
19:53until he was free of his parents, Ray Everham, then out of his first marriage.
20:02Now we see Jeff completely without handlers, without anybody telling him what to do.
20:09If free is what he is, it remains to be seen if Gordon can regain the form that has made
20:15him one of the greatest NASCAR drivers of all time.
20:21Here's Jeff Gordon.
20:37Since his divorce with Brooke, I think he's, you know, obviously let loose a little bit,
20:42and he's not as tied down as he used to be.
20:45There isn't a new Jeff Gordon.
20:46There's just Jeff Gordon that used to be.
20:48Now you can see him down in Daytona hanging outside his motorhome, talking to people,
20:53and actually having a good time laughing.
20:56I think I'm letting a little bit of the person away from the track come to the track every once
21:01in a while
21:02and just be a little bit more myself.
21:05Jeff Gordon won his fourth Winston Cup in 2001.
21:08But the next season, a gang of hungry young guns charged into his draft and upped the ante for victory.
21:15By the end of 2003, with only 15 wins over the last four seasons,
21:20the 32-year-old Gordon faced a question as he eased his foot off the pedal.
21:25A few years ago, Jeff Gordon had such a dominant race car that he could just pull out and drive
21:30around the outside of you.
21:31It's not like that now.
21:33That magic that he and Evertonham had, he'll never find that again.
21:36As he has progressed, has won races, and accumulated wealth, then all of a sudden, the toys get in the
21:43way.
21:44The next four seasons, he averaged fewer than four wins a year, compared with eight during his early dominant years.
21:52Oh, trouble. Jeff Gordon. Johnny Benson.
21:54Oh.
21:55Although Gordon won his third Daytona 500 in 2005, he missed the playoff-style chase for the championship
22:01and then went winless in the first four months of the 2006 season.
22:07Oh, almost contact between the 16.
22:10Oh, who's there?
22:10Almost contact. Get it, Gordon. The leader.
22:15As slumps go for Jeff Gordon, you always anticipate that it'll end at any time, and it didn't.
22:21It just kept dragging on and on and on.
22:23He was a 12th to 15th place car a lot of the time, and that wore on him terribly.
22:29So how do you respond?
22:30In June of 2006, at Sonoma, California, not far from where Gordon grew up in Vallejo,
22:36its fortunes changed in one magical weekend.
22:39He announces his engagement, and you almost knew he was going to win that day.
22:45Ninth road course win, extending the all-time record for Jeff Gordon.
22:49Jeff finally got to a place in his life where every single facet of it was just perfectly insane.
22:56Personal happiness translates.
22:59Gordon and Belgian model Ingrid van de Bosch were married in November of 2006.
23:04The following June, they had a baby girl.
23:07Hmm.
23:08On the track, Gordon's reemergence in 2007 was accelerated by NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow.
23:14Since last July, he's been chasing that 76th victory.
23:20Tonight is special.
23:22In the first five Car of Tomorrow races, Gordon won twice, and he didn't finish worse than fourth.
23:29He made more headlines in April of winning a non-Car of Tomorrow race at Talladega.
23:34It was the 77th victory of his career, moving him past his old rival, Dale Earnhardt.
23:39I've never caused a riot before winning, but, you know, well, maybe once or twice.
23:44But there's a lot of fans out there that are big Earnhardt fans and probably didn't want to see this
23:49broken.
23:53He's as good as he ever was, and he's committed.
23:56It's a competition tougher than it was, you know, a couple years back.
24:00Yes, it is.
24:02I think Jeff, without a doubt, looks outside of racing more than he used to.
24:07There's no question.
24:08But don't confuse that with not still wanting to win and still wanting to dominate.
24:13I think Jeff Gordon still wants to win now just as bad as he's ever wanted to win.
24:17He's going to push you hard for every position that he can get every week.
24:21I know what it takes to win a championship, and it takes consistency.
24:25And you don't necessarily have to win a lot of races to win those championships.
24:29But I'm driven to win.
24:34In a Travis Tritt song called I'm Going to Be Somebody Someday, a famous guitar player encounters an amazing young
24:41talent whom he refers to as the sandy-haired river boy.
24:44He wonders whether the phenom will topple him from atop the music world.
24:48The song was one of Dale Earnhardt's favorites, and when young Jeff Gordon began showing what he had,
24:53the Intimidator thought that perhaps he had found his sandy-haired river boy.
24:58For SportsCentury, I'm Chris Fowler.
25:01We did.
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