When you sit down to write a column about something, it’s usually a good idea to know which side you’re going to argue.

Actually, more often than we’d care to admit, columnists pick a side without much conviction and choose a point or two to argue forcefully while largely ignoring equally valid points on the other side. After all, it works in politics.

Once in a while, though, you come up against something you can’t fake your way through. And with the Nextel Cup series heading to Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend, I’ve run up on one of those.

A couple of weeks ago, rookie driver Brendan Gaughan was sitting around with a group of reporters talking. It wasn’t an interview; we were just shooting the breeze. Nobody said “off the record,” but nobody had to. It was just one of those conversations you know would never happen if anybody had out his notebook or tape recorder.

During that session, Gaughan mentioned that he’d won a tidy sum of money in Las Vegas by placing a legal wager on himself to win a Truck series race at Texas Motor Speedway. Gaughan’s family owns several casinos in Las Vegas and Gaughan has worked the sports books, so he really enjoyed being able to walk up with a winning ticket and collect money from his old buddies.

A couple of days later, I picked up another newspaper and read a story about how NASCAR planned to have a long talk with Gaughan about the very wager he’d talked about with us and, apparently, with other reporters in another setting that was considered on the record.

Is that a story? Well, obviously, I didn’t think so when the subject first came up, since I didn’t follow up and come back the next day to write something.

After the other story ran, I again chose not to write about it because, once again, the wager had been made in a perfectly legal fashion. Gaughan had placed the bet in person at a sports book in a casino in Las Vegas and not through an illegal bookmaker. He also, and I thought this was important, bet on himself.

Over the years that NASCAR has been going to Las Vegas, several drivers have admitted that they’ve put a few bucks down on themselves to win Busch or Cup series races. And some of them have cashed in.

The question for today, then, is whether there’s anything wrong with that?

Clearly, my first inclination is to say no.

Again, it’s legal to bet on NASCAR races in Las Vegas. Last week, the track’s public relations folks sent out the opening odds set forth by Micah Roberts, the oddsmaker for Station casinos in Las Vegas, who lists Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman and Jimmie Johnson at 8-1 as the favorites to win the Cup race and Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth as 3-1 choices for the Busch race.

Many of the reporters covering the races this weekend, I assure you, will have money down on one or both of the races. I speak from personal experience on that.

All of that, in my mind, makes it awfully hard for me to get up on a high horse and say NASCAR needs to make and enforce a strict policy prohibiting its competitors from gambling on the sport in which they participate.

At the same time, however, it’s just as hard to draw a line that makes racers gambling on NASCAR OK but also makes what got Pete Rose in so much hot water with baseball so heinous.

Is there any difference in a racer betting on himself in a race and a baseball manager betting on his own team? None that I can see.

But what about a guy who works for one team that has very little chance of winning? If he sees a line he likes and puts down $20, does the fact that he’s got a hand in tuning his team’s car make him guilty of trying to affect the outcome of the event? And, while we’re talking hypothetically here, is it possible that a NASCAR official might have, at some point on a trip to a race in Las Vegas, put down a buck or two on an event he’s working? You’d certainly hate to hear that, wouldn’t you?

Should all persons credentialed to work inside the garage this weekend be asked not to gamble on the races, even though such gambling is perfectly legal?

I wish I had an answer I believed in for you, folks.