Rallying behind Big Brown is like rallying behind the phone company. He's the Jeff Gordon of horse racing, succeeding where the equine Dale Earnhardt Jrs. have failed, as locked into a corporate sponsorship -- with UPS -- as any NASCAR team.

His trainer, brash and abrasive, has multiple doping infractions on his record. He's owned by a corporation run by a shady ex-stockbroker. Yay, capitalism.

The past two horses to reach this point -- who had a chance to win the Triple Crown with a win in the Belmont Stakes -- were far easier to cheer for than Big Brown, with their cuddly backstories and uplifting tales.

But Big Brown is going to do today what those two, and the other eight before them, couldn't, and that's end the 30-year Triple Crown drought.

Funny Cide was everyman's horse, literally. Owned by a group of racegoers from upstate New York who stumbled onto a champion, he came within five lengths of the Triple Crown.

Smarty Jones' home base was the decidedly downscale backstretch of Philadelphia Park. He resembled another Philadelphia hero, an undersized blue-collar guy who survived tragedy to beat up on more regally bred competition. Smarty Jones fell in the Belmont, as well, losing by a mere length.

And Barbaro -- he never made it past the Preakness Stakes, but found his own place in people's hearts.

Not only were those three arguably better horses than Big Brown, whose impressive wins in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness have come against an impossibly weak crop of 3-year-olds, so were the other eight horses that have taken the first two legs of the Triple Crown since 1978 only to falter at the end. That group includes some wonderful horses like Spectacular Bid, Sunday Silence and Alysheba.

But there's no point in rooting against Big Brown. He may not be a great horse, but he's good enough to beat his woeful peers.

His wide run from an awful outside post in the Derby was a man-among-boys performance; the way he effortlessly put away the Preakness field by stepping on the gas as he turned for home was the stuff of legend.

Still, Big Brown's speed figures aren't anything to suggest greatness, including a particularly pedestrian time in the Preakness.

Of course, he didn't have to push himself then, and he probably won't this evening, because he's so much better than the other healthy 3-year-olds.

It's a double-whammy: Horses race too much as 2-year-olds and are increasingly fragile, the fruit of too many years of breeding for precocious speed instead of stamina and strength.

The hoof problem that limited Big Brown to one start as a 2-year-old means that unlike his fatigued and fragile brethren, he's healthy when it matters most.

Unlike, say, War Pass, who went 4-for-4 as a 2-year-old last summer and looked like a superhorse in the making. A few weeks before the Derby, he suffered a hairline fracture in his ankle and is still on the sideline.

Big Brown's biggest challenger today is Casino Drive, a mysterious Japanese import who is a half-brother to the past two Belmont winners and whose jockey, Edgar Prado, has twice deflected Triple Crown bids in the Belmont. Casino Drive also was injured as a 2-year-old and has raced only twice, with an impressive win in his one North American start.

Beyond him, there's Denis of Cork, who hung within nine lengths of Big Brown at the Kentucky Derby, coming from far behind but never threatening.

But the rest of the field, as it did in the Preakness, verges on a joke -- no more so than 0-for-5 Guadalcanal, who will start directly to Big Brown's right, quite possibly as close as he'll get to the big horse all day.

Big Brown may not be a great horse. He may not be particularly charismatic. But at 6:25 p.m. today, he's headed into history, because there's no one to stop him.

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