by Darrell Waltrip

Updated: January 18, 2008, 4:01 PM EST 190 comments

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But before I tell you all about that, I have to make a confession. I am not necessarily a part of the "cyber age." In recent years, I have learned how to e-mail (which I do on a limited basis), how to send text messages, and how to do a lot of the 21st century things that people, particularly those in the media, need to know how to do. I'll admit that I've been slow to adapt, but nonetheless I have been working on it and I'm getting there. Now, I can e-mail pictures and learned enough so I can live on the internet.

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One of the things I really enjoy doing on the internet is my column for FOXSports.com and AllWaltrip.com. I enjoy writing because it allows me to express my views and I enjoy the feedback that I get from fans that are pro and con. I love to have respectful debates, I love it when fans disagree and they tell me why and I love when fans agree and tell me why — that's what makes it fun. For me not being at the track every weekend during the second half of the NASCAR season, the internet has become a very useful tool because it allows me to keep in touch and voice my opinions and concerns though my vehicle at FOXSports.com and AllWaltrip.com.

Having confessed that, allow me to tell you what happened this weekend. Last Friday, I wrote my yearly column asking fans whether I should say "Boogity, boogity, boogity! Let's go racing" before every race, and included a poll so fans could vote. We have done it before and have always gotten genuine results from fans that like and dislike "Boogity, boogity, boogity!" I thought the poll was pretty fair and I never thought it was tainted in any way because the numbers normally lined up as they did in the past.

This year, the poll results started off the same way. A few hours after the story was posted, we had about 8,000 votes and it was 73 percent in favor of keeping "Boogity" and 27 percent against, and that's similar to the results we have gotten for the question the last three or four years that we have done it. But between Friday night and Saturday morning some ‘funny business' happened, because we got over 90,000 votes and the results had flopped to almost the exact opposite, with 70 percent against and 30 percent for.

I'd like to think that there are that many folks who look at my column every day and that many folks that would respond to our surveys, polls and all the things that we do, but I'm realistic enough to know that it's not true. It reminds me of when Robby Gordon auctioned off the helmet that he threw at my brother Michael at New Hampshire in 2005. Gordon put the helmet on eBay and the bids were around $6,000, then somebody bid over $100,000 and it just started escalating from there.

What I guess I am learning is that as controlled as our polls are on our Web site, that people can sabotage it. Apparently that is what happened and that's unfortunate because I know that a lot of my fans and other people out there love to participate in things like this, sharing their thoughts and voting on things honestly, letting the chips fall where they may. But apparently somebody decided that they wanted to taint the vote and that's unfortunate.

I am going to follow the results of the poll before the apparent taint because I feel those are the results from the fans who were genuine about their votes. As I mentioned earlier, the vote came out as usual, with 70 percent for "Boogity, boogity, boogity!" and 30 percent against.

But I do feel bad for all my good buddies, my friends and my fans who played by the rules until somebody came along and messed up the whole deal for everybody. I hope nobody is offended or got their feelings hurt by the results of the poll or that we pulled the poll of the page, but if you can't do it fair and you can't do it right — there's no reason to do it at all.

I'll just go by my gut feeling, which has always served me pretty well. And my gut feeling is that across the board the fans are supportive of starting the NASCAR on FOX races with "Boogity, boogity, boogity! Let's go racing." So just consider that a done deal.

Oh, by the way

In no way did I intend to start a debate about Chris Myers, what he does, how he does, who he is or how he fits in our telecasts with my "Oh, by the way" comments in my last column.

Chris Myers is my friend and I care about him. I know he works hard and that he is a good person.

I am always uncomfortable when my friends — whether they are drivers, crew chiefs, NASCAR, whomever — take heat. I feel like they need somebody to defend them, and if you knew Chris Myers like I knew him you'd be defending him too.

So I wasn't giving anybody "the business" in my column. This isn't about business, it's about friendship. And this is about going home and watching a telecast and analyzing it week-in and week-out to see what we do right and what we do wrong. I have a lot of my buddies, 75 to be exact, who meet at my house every Tuesday morning. All of them are race fans and all of them are critics. We sit down and they all tell me what we did right and what we did wrong. That group keeps me accountable, so if we aren't doing something right, I usually hear about it.

Because of that, I am proud of the work we do and I'm proud of the people I work with. I would stand by any of them. No one of us is as smart as all of us together, and all of us together are a pretty darn good group.