Humpy Wheeler was a busy man Friday afternoon.

Two days before the start of the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Wheeler -- the president of the track for the past 33 years -- was bogged down with interviews starting with a morning meeting with ESPN. Sunday will be Humpy’s last day at the Speedway. He’s retiring, but don’t expect him to fade away.

“I’ve had a lot of fun,” Wheeler said Friday, “and I am going to continue to be in this business. I’m starting a book with a pretty well-known sports biographer out of New York, and we are going to be announcing that as far as who it is in the next few weeks. I’m going to write a pretty unique book about racing from my perspective ... where it’s been and where I think it will go. I’m going to continue to do the ‘Humpy Show’ on the Speed Channel, and I am going to do some other TV work and probably do some work for NASCAR, too. I’m going to be plenty busy.”

The fact that Wheeler is at this point is a testament to his belief in what the sport of racing would become years ago. All of the above -- the book, the show, the career -- might not have happened had he wavered in his belief and listened to the advice of one very good friend, Alex Hawkins.

Where it all began

If you are a race fan, you might not know that Humpy Wheeler was a South Carolina Gamecock football player.

It was during that time that he met Hawkins, a Denmark resident and former running mate of John Unitas as a Baltimore Colt.

“(Wheeler) was probably the smallest lineman in the history of college football,” Hawkins said. “He was a center and a guard. I’ll tell you what he was really good at though ... he was a hell of a boxer (Wheeler had a 40-2 amateur record and a dozen Golden Gloves championships) and he has probably whipped up on a dozen of those (NASCAR) drivers.”

The scrappy Wheeler and rabble-rousing Hawkins became friends quickly.

“When I went down to South Carolina the first day,” Wheeler said, “I went down in January. I had just got through playing high school football, and I was in awe of everybody down there. Knowing spring practice was right around the corner, he helped me get through those first couple of tough years.

“(Hawkins) was always a dear friend of mine,” he added. “I sat on the bench at South Carolina and watched him play because he was a great football player. I enjoyed my time with him, and we got to continue our relationship with each other afterwards. I watched him go through some interesting times, but there are very few guys that could play football the way he could in South Carolina or anywhere else. He’s one of those guys that came out of West Virginia, and he is what I called my first version of total, reckless abandon. He would just throw his body at people in complete peril.”

Being a few years ahead of Wheeler, Hawkins left and went on to play for the Colts. But, Wheeler said his friend often came back to visit his former teammates, and after his first season in the NFL, Hawkins came back to Columbia. It was then that the man whose resume includes a pro football career, television color commentating, a couple of books and a shiny record plaque on the wall -- his book, “My story (And I’m Sticking To It) inspired Collin Raye’s hit “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking To It” -- gave Wheeler the advice that he luckily didn’t listen to.

A ‘redneck sport’ headed nowhere

Alex Hawkins cracks up every time he tells the story.

He and Wheeler loaded up one day to head over to the Columbia Speedway. According to Wheeler, around 800 fans looked on that day as Ralph Earnhardt took the checkered flag. When the race was through, the two friends hit the road again.

“He and I were just driving around and drinking beer and I said, ‘Humpy, what are you going to be doing with yourself?’” Hawkins recalled. “He said, ‘As soon as I get out of school, I’m going to get into the racing business. I’m going in NASCAR.’

“I said, ‘Take my word for it, it’s a redneck sport that ain’t going nowhere.’”

Wheeler can’t help but laugh thinking back on that day as well.

“He said, ‘You can do something better than that,’ and I never forgot that,” he said. “That was funny.”

As the years passed, Wheeler never let Hawkins forget about it either.

“Every time I saw him after that,” Hawkins said, “and he was so successful and NASCAR was going off the charts ... he would say, ‘I sure am glad I took our word for it.’”

Years later, Wheeler helped Hawkins get involved with NASCAR briefly. In his post-football life, Hawkins looked to the sport as a way to make a living, designing a shoulder bag, but failing to patent it before big business swept in and stole the idea from him.

“I didn’t trademark it, and they screwed me out of $70,000,” Hawkins said. “Humpy just apologized forever. He said, ‘I didn’t think they would do that to you,’ and I said, ‘Corporate America will do anything to you.’”

Happy ending for Humpy

Nobody is happier that Wheeler didn’t take the advice than the man who gave it, and when Hawkins found out his friend was retiring he picked up the phone.

“His timing could not have been any better,” Hawkins said. “I talked to him, and he said he had done a lot and accomplished all he needed to accomplish. He said it’s just more of the same. He said he would be 70 soon, and I said, ‘Don’t tell me nothing about that that I don’t know. Seventy changes everything.’”

Wheeler said the retirement wouldn’t change that much about his life. While there have been reports that his relationship with his boss, Speedway Motorsports CEO Bruton Smith, has become frigid and expedited his stepping away from the track in Charlotte, Wheeler sounds like a man looking forward to what’s next.

“I just won’t have a speedway to run anymore,” he said. “I’ve been running speedways all my life. Soon as I got out of South Carolina, I opened a little dirt track up and I’ve been running speedways ever since. At the same time, I’ve been running a company, Speedway Motorsports, and we have a bunch of racetracks. We’ve been working hard for an awful long time, and I want just a little time to spend with friends like Alex and family, things like that that I’ve missed all these years.

“I didn’t get down to a South Carolina game this year,” he continued. “I went to one last year, and I am looking forward to getting down there and seeing the Gamecocks play a couple times next year. It’s going to be a different chapter in my life. Most guys my age are retired anyway. I’ve held off for a while ... it’s going to be a fun part of my life.”

But what if, all those years ago, Humpy Wheeler would have listened to Alex Hawkins?

“I might be sitting down at Santee Cooper with him drinking beer and fishing,” Wheeler said laughing. “I don’t know what I would have ended up doing. It’s hard to say. I’ve done a few other things. I’ve been in the TV business; the movie business ... gosh knows where I would’ve ended up.

“I probably would have a boring job in a bank somewhere where they would have made me change my name.”

 -- T&D Sports Editor Brian Linder can be reached via e-mail at blinder@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5553. Check out his blog, Welcome to Linderland, at www.thetandd.com.

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