The idea of limiting the number of teams a Nextel Cup car owner can have sounds, at first, like a song being played on a poorly tuned piano.

Something about it just doesn’t sound right.

Jack Roush had one of the year’s best quotes recently at Kansas Speedway just after NASCAR Chairman Brian France floated the issue to reporters. “It feels like ‘Get Shorty’ to me,” Roush said.

That’s understandable, because clearly Roush seems like he’d have the most to lose under the hard cap of three, or perhaps fewer, that France is talking about.

Roush has five teams, and all are in this year’s Chase for the Nextel Cup. So, at least on the surface, it seems NASCAR aims to punish Roush for the success he’s enjoying – on the business and competitive sides of the sport.

Hendrick Motorsports, which has four full-time teams, also could argue it’s being penalized for success. And to some, that not only sounds wrong, it sounds downright un-American.

We don’t know the details of how NASCAR plans to establish and phase in these limits. France said the policies could be announced within weeks, and until those come it’s impossible to draw firm conclusions on how such a cap might work and whether it will be entirely fair.

It would be an equally poor idea to reject team limits based simply on the initial questions the concept raises.

NASCAR is right to be worried about the trend toward multicar operations. For starters, the sanctioning body doesn’t want to lose any power it holds to run the sport.

If four or five car owners wound up owning five and six teams apiece, that kind of consolidation of resources could lead to a consolidation of power. That’s the same road other racing series have stumbled down toward disaster in the past 25 years.

But as tinny as the note struck by the team-limit concept might be, it sounds just as right to say the Nextel Cup Series would be better off, in the long term, with 12 well-funded, well-operated two- or three-car teams than it would be with six five-car teams.

A decade ago, many people in the sport believed two-car teams wouldn’t work, much less fouar- and five-car teams. Roush and Hendrick had the vision to see they could, and they’ve worked diligently to make that happen. They’re enjoying the rewards.

NASCAR has to have a long view, too.

When Hendrick formed his All-Star Racing and brought it to the Cup series in 1984, he had one team and no sponsor. Roush started in 1998 with just Mark Martin. The obstacles they cleared in getting a foothold in the sport is the foundation on which their loyalty and Roush’s success is now built.

If those two men, in the same financial shape they were in back when they first started, were looking at making the leap into Nextel Cup right now, would they do it?

Could they? Could a Joe Gibbs take the financial risk he did to start his own team today?

Maybe not. And the fact that there’s a question about whether the people who are among the sport’s best right now could even get in the door today is enough to make team limits an idea that, at least, ought to get a full and fair hearing.