Childress Believes Swearingen can become Carolina Cowboys’ Dale Earnhardt
By: Justin Felisko
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – In the 1990s, Richard Childress remembers standing next to Dale Earnhardt at a PBR event in North Carolina when the two were introduced to the PBR faithful during a Bud Light Series Cup event.
The crowd erupted for the legendary NASCAR champion. Fast forward to this past weekend, and the Carolina PBR fans may have been even louder when 2022 World Champion Daylon Swearingen delivered the hometown team a walkoff victory over the Arizona Ridge Riders with his 87.75-point ride on Jailhouse Cat at Cowboy Days inside LJVM Coliseum.
When Carolina Cowboys coach Jerome Davis and General Manager Austin Dillon aggressively tried to acquire Swearingen during the 2022 PBR Team Series Draft, presented by ZipRecruiter, Childress knew the Cowboys could be getting the foundation of their team.
Similarly, when Childress retired from racing in 1981, he put a rising star by the name of Dale Earnhardt inside the then-Wrangler Jeans No. 3 car.
Earnhardt had won his first Winston Cup Championship a year earlier. Following a two-year separation, he returned to RCR and eventually won his first of another six Winston Cup Championships in 1986.
The match between Childress and Earnhardt became one of the fiercest in NASCAR history. Childress knows that having a legend behind the No. 3 car was huge for the growth of Richard Childress Racing.
Now Swearingen, who is still only 23 years old, could become the Dale Earnhardt for the Carolina Cowboys.
“It’s key to building a franchise and building a brand,” Childress said earlier this year during the PBR Teams Preseason Event in Tryon, North Carolina. “Back when we put Dale Earnhardt in the car when I got out of it, he was well-known. He was a Rookie of the Year, a champion, and to put him in and go out two years later and win a championship, it just carried us all the way up the ladder. So, it was really important for us to be able to get Daylon.”
Coincidentally, Swearingen visited the Richard Childress Racing Museum in Lexington, North Carolina, as a kid and posed for a photo with Earnhardt’s famous black No. 3 stock car. Swearingen took a similar photo when he toured the museum again during the Cowboys’ training camp this summer at the Davis ranch in Archdale.
“It’s pretty cool to be compared to him,” Swearingen said. “Every guy in our locker room all has the same goals. We want to be the first team champions, and we all click. We all get along.”
Davis said the plan has been to build Carolina around Swearingen once they pulled off the surprising trade to acquire him from the Texas Rattlers.
“We call on Daylon a lot,” Davis said. “A whole lot, and we’re excited. It was a God thing that we even ended up with Daylon. With us having the seventh pick, and we still get the World Champ? I mean, how does that work? Daylon has been our guy. He’s a young guy who’s really got the grit and the want-to, and that’s what this team is built around. That’s what I like about our team. You just don’t see them quit.”
The Cowboys went 2-1 at their homestand in Winston-Salem this past weekend. It was Taylor who helped the Cowboys stay atop the PBR Team Standings with an 89.75-point ride on Duke in the Bonus Round.
The 10-6 Cowboys are tied with Arizona and the Austin Gamblers for the best record in the league, but Carolina gets the No. 1 ranking because of the first tiebreaker, which is Bonus Points (46).
Swearingen (12-for-18) and Taylor (10-for-19) also give the Cowboys the No. 2/3 riders in the MVP race.
Combine them with the returning 2016 World Champion Cooper Davis, who went 3-for-3 in his first action since the end of January, and the Cowboys are poised to keep pushing forward at this weekend’s Freedom Fest.
Carolina takes on Arizona (10-6) Friday night at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City in a battle between the two best teams in the league. Carolina is 2-0 against Arizona this season, outscoring the Ridge Riders by 183 points.
All the action from OKC begins at 8:45 p.m. ET on RidePass on Pluto TV.
“We’ve just got a great team, and we’re working to build a team atmosphere and a family atmosphere around these young guys that have already always ridden by themselves,” Childress said. “You’ve got to have the right players that really have the same goal and understand about team. We’ve been doing a lot of working with them on team concept, team stuff, getting the whole group together to let them understand that we’re family.
“Everybody’s got everybody’s back on this team, and we’re all pulling for everybody. The better everybody does, the better this whole team’s going to do. We support each other no matter what. If you get bucked off, we’ll go over and say, ‘We’ll get ‘em next time.’ You go win, throw your hats into the arena.”
Follow Justin Felisko on Twitter @jfelisko
Photo courtesy of Todd Brewer/Bull Stock Media
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