| | By Bruce Martin
Sports Ticker
INDIANAPOLIS -- Joe Gibbs has scored victories at the highest levels of athletic competition. When he was coach of the Washington Redskins, he won three Super Bowls.
As a Winston Cup team owner, he is one of the best in the business and his first victory was a Daytona 500 win with Dale Jarrett in 1993. Today, he enjoyed another glorious achievement when his driver, Bobby Labonte, captured the Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Super Bowl titles, Daytona 500 wins and a victory at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway -- Gibbs knows how to win the big ones.
"When I grew up, I was a big race fan and I dreamed of one day getting to come to the Brickyard and watch a race," he said. "Then to have a chance to do that and to come here and run a lap in practice was a special time. Today, to be able to win this race is just a great experience.
"This is one of the great sporting events in the world with the
tradition and everything it has here. I think I probably felt
that as much as anything. I was just thrilled to be a part of
it."
Gibbs was still an NFL coach when he decided to become a Winston
Cup owner. He had a dream, then he had a plan. And like any
good football coach, he devised a way to execute that plan.
"I went to Norm Miller of Interstate Batteries and told him one
day I wanted to go racing," Gibbs recalled. "I didn't have a
race car, I didn't have a motor, I didn't have anything. Norm
was dumb enough to believe me.
"I think today was as great a day as I've ever had with any win
in any sport or anything else. This is just as good as winning
a Super Bowl. They are both special. In football, it was a
different feeling by actually working and making it happen. This
is different because so many people came with us and contributed
to this -- the sponsors, the crew and the driver."
For the past three years, Gibbs has come close to winning at the
Brickyard. Labonte finished second to Ricky Rudd in 1997 and to
Dale Jarrett last year. He was third when Jeff Gordon won in
1998.
But Gibbs also experienced misfortune at the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway in the mid-1990s. After discovering it was more fun to
be a NASCAR owner than an NFL coach, Gibbs had one of his Super
Bowl rings stolen during an autograph signing.
Gibbs used to sign autographs outside the team transporter and
he would have one of his Super Bowl rings on display. After one
autograph session, the ring was missing.
"I took it off and threw it to some people and they were looking
at it," Gibbs said. "All of a sudden, I turned and left and two
hours later, I realized I had left my ring over there. I went
over to the trailer, was looking around and thought I'd get it
back in an hour or so.
"Two weeks later, I got a phone call and there was a lady on the
other end of the line said, `My son stole your Super Bowl ring.'
She was crying and said she would send it back. Before my
secretary told her how to ship it, she hung up. A few days
later, it came back in a big box rattling around. For every
person out there who would do something like that, there is
somebody's mama that would send it back."
Gibbs is one of the best motivators and leaders in sports. He
has used those talents to become one of the greatest winners in
two vastly different types of competition -- pro football and
auto racing.
"I think the hard thing about motorsports to me that I have a
hard time adjusting to is in football, it's one team against
another," Gibbs said. "This is 43 teams every week and so many
different things can happen to you. It's such a long process
and you have to be so good for such a long period of time, and
so many things can happen to you.
"There have only been two years out of the nine that we have
been in this sport where I felt like we even had a chance to win
a championship and that was this year and last year."
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