Light shining on Jimmie should be brighter

Sonoma, California – Driver Jimmie Johnson has won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship for four consecutive years … and you would think that would be worth more than what it is.

American sports society loves to elevate the sports hero of the moment to god-like status – Kobe Bryant’s now the greatest basketball player of all-time because his Lakers just won the NBA championship; that LeBron dude is a has-been – and while Johnson gets sizable respect in his sport, it’s really at a level below what he’s accomplished.

Beyond stock car racing, Johnson seems to register a mere blip.

I find this incredible.

Let’s say Bryant leads the Lakers to two more NBA championships over the next two years. Don’t you think his face is on the cover of every magazine in the world? Can the solid gold statue on The Mall in Washington, D.C. be far behind?

What if Tiger Woods suddenly gets hot and wins, say, the next six majors. Sainthood awaits.

All Johnson did was win four consecutive titles in a sport so competitive that you have to rely on other drivers to carry you through on some tracks – think Daytona and Talladega – and where the stopwatch separation between excellence and last place is measured in tenths of a second.

And yet, watching Johnson walk the garage and paddock here at Infineon Raceway – where the Toyota/Save Mart 350 will be run Sunday – there are the usual shouts and stares, but they’re nothing like the crowd worship for Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Carl Edwards.

Even Johnson’s superb qualifying effort here on Friday – he’ll start second Sunday alongside pole-sitter Kasey Kahne – was greeted with a comparative yawn from media and fans. Reason: Johnson has yet to win on a road course.

To me, this is sort of like slamming St. Louis Cardinals superstar slugger Albert Pujols because he has not yet hit 60 home runs in a season.

Johnson, of course, laughs it off. He’s heard the not-enough-respect lines before and jokes that perhaps he’d get more attention by adopting a NASCAR bad-guy image – maybe shove a rival driver after the checkered flag, put a couple cars into the wall or maybe let loose with a string or profanities over the in-car radio.

He has a point.

Dale Earnhardt crafted a gunslinger, intimidator image to the point where the myth overrode the driver. Earnhardt handled a stock car like Wynton Marsalis handles a trumpet. He didn’t need the image, but he sure used it to his advantage.

I guarantee you that if Earnhardt had lived to win four consecutive NASCAR titles, the hero worship within the sport would have been off the charts.

So, as I watch Johnson chase a fifth title, I wonder if any of this bothers him, even deep down. My guess is no.

When you have to settle for being Hollywood handsome, a multi-millionaire and being adored by millions, well, life is pretty good.