You Know You’re Too Sensitive When ...

Apparently, NASCAR wasn’t happy when driver Derrike Cope arrived in Las Vegas with a new dot-com sponsor.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that the folks from NASCAR did not like his affiliation with redneckjunk.com, and fired off a letter saying so. You know, that old image thing.

“The majority of its fan base for the past 50 years have been rednecks,” Tom Connelly, the chief executive of redneckjunk.com, told the Sentinel.

But the website appears to be thriving and has a picture of Cope’s Dodge. The site sells outdoor gear, and just below the picture of Cope’s car is an offer: The first 1,000 people to post an ad with the site will get either a T-shirt or a trucker cap with the website’s logo on it.

Trivia time: What year did Cope win the Daytona 500?

Faulty ‘Bama rewrite: The decision by the University of Alabama to change the Sylvester Croom Commitment to Excellence Award to the Bart Starr Commitment to Excellence Award did not go unnoticed.

The spring football award is named for a former Crimson Tide star, but the symbolism went beyond the significance of the honor. Rick Cleveland of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., asked why it was changed after so many years and was told it was done by Coach Mike Shula because Croom is now coaching at rival Mississippi State.

“The decision stinks,” Cleveland wrote. “It reeks of pettiness and tackiness, and perhaps of some insecurity on the part of Shula.

“It stinks because Sylvester Croom’s commitment to excellence has not changed. If anything, Croom’s commitment has been rewarded, finally.”

Gopher nation: A sensation has hit Minnesota and, incredibly, it has nothing to do with sticks and pucks.

The University of Minnesota women’s basketball team has taken center stage with its journey to the Final Four in New Orleans.

“I never thought I’d see the day when we’d talk about women’s basketball this way,” Mike Max of WCCO radio told Jackie Crosby of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

“Everyone’s just talking about the game of basketball, and not prefacing it with women’s basketball. People are talking about specific moves or their outrage at the officiating, all things usually synonymous with the men’s game.”

The pound: Columnist Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle, on former 49er quarterback Jeff Garcia’s signing with the Cleveland Browns:

“He should be a good fit in Cleveland. He’s been in the doghouse the last two seasons.”

Bill II: Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was wondering, as were many others, during the NCAA basketball tournament: “At what point in time did [Georgia Tech’s] Luke Schenscher turn into Bill Walton?

Trivia answer: 1990. He won two Cup races that year.

And finally: Not long, perhaps minutes, after swimming star Ian Thorpe fell off the blocks in the Australian Olympic trials and was disqualified from the 400-meter freestyle, he received this text message from a friend: “OOPS.”