Does Dale Earnhardt belong in the Hall of Fame? (Spoiler: yes.)

Today marks the day that NASCAR will announce its inaugural Hall of Fame class, coming at 4 p.m. Eastern. (We'll have total coverage right here, including a chat at 1 p.m. and a post going up shortly after the announcements to let you air your thoughts.)

Five members of an initial pool of 25 will be inducted into the inaugural class, and conventional wisdom holds that Richard Petty, Bill France Sr. and Dale Earnhardt are stone-cold locks, with the remaining two coming from some combination of Junior Johnson, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson and maybe one or two others. (I say Johnson and Pearson, myself.)

So there's frankly not a whole lot to debate about the Hall of Fame, unless you turn the entire debate on its head, as Christopher Leone bravely does over at Bleacher Report.Leone offers up an opinion with the please-don't-kill-me headline of "Don't Put Dale Earnhardt In The Hall of Fame, At Least Not Yet" that is screaming for attention, so let's give him some. (Hey, put down those shotguns. This is a friendly discussion.)

Leone's point isn't that Earnhardt doesn't belong in the Hall -- no sane individual could even remotely argue that -- but that Earnhardt shouldn't be in the inaugural class:

I think the pioneers of the sport ought to go in first.

My other passion in life besides sports is music, and although I generally criticize the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for being a letdown, they've gotten at least one thing right. When the Hall was first established, its voters decided to induct the founders of the genre--men like Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Fats Domino--over such dominant bands as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones.

This move ensured that memories of the founding fathers of rock and roll would be preserved, and re-introduced the public to those figures during its first few years, when those other important, but chronologically later, bands weren't in the Hall.

That's actually a really good point, valuing history over longevity. (For the record, he picks Red Byron, Herb Thomas, Raymond Parks, Lee Petty, and Big Bill France.) Baseball took the opposite approach when it opened its hall in 1936, bringing in guys who had been retired less than 10 years (in Babe Ruth's case, less than one) as well as guys who were decades gone.

If it were anybody other than Earnhardt, I'd say the history-over-popularity argument makes sense. But Earnhardt is a study in history himself. Almost as much as France himself, Earnhardt is responsible for NASCAR's current level of popularity and its enduring persona. If you were going to sculpt the perfect race car driver -- talent, attitude, image -- it'd look a whole lot like the Intimidator.

And I don't even want to think about what the No. 3 hordes will do if their man isn't enshrined today.

Don't Put Dale Earnhardt In The Hall of Fame, At Least Not Yet [Bleacher Report]