NASCAR is a sport rooted deep in the Southeast, started by bootleggers and until recently thought of as a “Good ‘ole Boy” sport. If you take a look at the drivers of today you can see that they were not all born and bred below the Mason-Dixon. So I was wondering, where did all of today’s “Good ‘ole Boys” come from?

As a matter of fact, half of the drivers who are in the top ten in NASCAR Nextel Cup points, right now, are from the mid-West section of our country. Three drivers are from Missouri; Rusty Wallace (ranked 4th), Jamie McMurray (7th) and Carl Edwards (10th). Tony Stewart (ranked #1) and Ryan Newman (ranked #8) were both born in Indiana.

Three are from the West coast. Jimmie Johnson, 2nd in points, is from California. Greg Biffle, ranked 3rd, calls Washington his home state. The reigning Nextel Cup champion, Kurt Busch, (6th in points right now) hails from Nevada.

Only two drivers in the top ten are even close to being from the Southeast; Mark Martin (5th in points) is from Arkansas and Jeremy Mayfield, from Kentucky, is ranked 7th.

Most NASCAR Nextel Cup teams have their shops and offices in the Carolinas. How ever, in the 50 top ranked series drivers, the majority moved there from other states. Surprisingly, the most (nine, total) came all the way from California. North Carolina and Missouri each have five drivers from their states. Four drivers come from each of the states of Wisconsin and Virginia. Kentucky has three drivers ranked in the Cup series top 50. Indiana, Washington, Nevada, Texas, Tennessee and Georgia have two drivers each born in their states. One driver ranked in the top 50 is from Ontario, Canada. (Guess who?) Arkansas, Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Vermont all have one driver each from their respective states.

Granted many of the drivers in the top 50 have only one or two starts, but I still think this is a trend. Could this be one of the reasons why NASCAR has gained such popularity with the masses? That’s 19 different states and one foreign country raising up stock car drivers for us. You know, that doesn’t even count those “kids” in the Busch series. WOW!!