Imagine a job where you go into your office, and you have a multitude of people in public forums, many of whom you've never met, screaming for your head on a platter, demanding you retire from your job. And for what? You enforced the rulebook as it is written. 

It's not all doom and gloom, as you have many private supporters and your team respects your challenging position. This doesn't make for good media fodder or social media banter. 

Welcome to Graham Light's world, NHRA's VP of Operations. He's the man in the NHRA with the thickest skin of them all. 

"When you’re doing something that was your hobby, that you have a passion for, then the time you invest in doing it doesn’t matter," Light said. "I don’t think everybody disagrees with my decisions all the time. We’re in a sport where we have two cars side by side, one winner, and one loser. One person’s unhappy, and one’s happy. And when you make a decision on a competition issue, one competitor’s happy and one’s not. 

"That’s just the role we’re in. The government’s the same way. The media spends four years trying to elect a president; then they spend the next four years tearing them apart. We’re in that same boat; we’re the governing body."

Truth be known, Light hates confrontation.  

"There are so many good people out there, and I hate to get into confrontations with anybody," Light said. "Really when you look at it, we have races with four, five, six hundred cars. And throughout the weekend, you may have one or two confrontations. The odds are pretty good. A lot of people are out there enjoying the sport."

There was a time when Light enjoyed the sport in a different role. He started as a Competition Eliminator racer and as a determined competitor, worked his way into a Top Fuel ride, with his most famous performance being a runner-up finish at the 1977 NHRA World Finals in Ontario, Ca.

"I think any racer tries to interpret the rules, and play the rules to their advantage," Light said. "That doesn’t mean they’re cheating or doing anything illegal; it would be worse [to have the old rulebook] than it is today because the rules were vaguer. Now we try to spell it out as clear as possible so that it reduces confrontations. I think that 99-percent of the racers out there play by the rules, they do. Sometimes something maybe gets by them, or it’s interpreted a little bit different, and there’s an infraction. 

"We played by the rules, maybe that’s why we didn’t win a lot of races."

Light's rules enforcement sometimes transcends the black and white of mechanical regulations and jumps over into the totally gray area of race procedure and politics. More times than not, Light ends up walking a fine line of the gray area; the kind of ruling which puts one in a damned if I do, and damned if I don't scenario.

Light has no one to blame for his role but himself; it's the life he chose for himself once he stepped away from driving. He first took over as manager for Edmonton Raceway in the late-1970s where, in a twist of fate, ended up with an acting role in the low-budget drag racing movie "Fast Company." Even in this role, the one-time card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild was put in a no-win, controversial situation. 

In his case, sometimes art depicts life. 

"Well, my acting career was real short," Light admitted with a smile. "I never got on the Academy Awards stage. I think they gave me a token part just because they used my race track all summer to make the movie. So they felt sorry for me, so we’ll give you a little speaking part. 

"You know, you never know what the future’s going to hold. You look back at some of the tracks you take in life, and we end up where we are today. There's are lots of factors when you look back as to what caused you to go down that path. If you get lucky, you meet a lot of good people; you’re in the right place at the right time. I love doing what I’m doing. I love this sport; I love the people. Yeah, it gets tense at times, and it’s sometimes frustrating."

Light has been with the NHRA a total of 33 years, first taking over as Director of Operations as the legendary Steve Gibbs stepped out of the role in 1998.  

The toughest part of the job is to remain void of emotion and be an impartial judge, even at the sight of a racer who has struggled to reach the pinnacle and then see them reach the peak. 

"You always like to see that," Light said. "It takes a lot of money to be out here, and it’s a lot of work, and when somebody does break through, you’re happy for that person. We’re neutral, we’ve got to play that role, and we do, all our people do. That doesn’t mean that inside you’re not happy as heck for the guy. 

"I don’t think it's tough to be unemotional. I think when you’ve done it as long as I have, and some other people, you just adapt to the situation you’re in. I think if you took somebody out of college and put them in this role that there would be a tremendous emotional learning curve. I’ve been a racetrack operator before, and it is not easy at times either. And I raced for a few years. You kind of just learn to adapt and go with the punches and understand it is what it is sometimes." 

Light doesn't deny the reality he's closer to the end of his career than the start and one day he'll give up the hustle and bustle of a 24-race schedule intermingled with dozens of company appearances. 

For a man, who prefers to be behind the scenes, how does he wish to be remembered when he finally hangs up the VP of Operations role?

"I really don’t even think about that," Light said. "I’m just here doing the job. It’s not just me; it’s a team of very qualified, experienced people. Whether it be starting line, or racer registration, the tower, Safety Safari, tech, those are dedicated people. And they’re the ones that make this happen. And I don’t think I need to be remembered for anything."

Those who know him differ in opinion, as they will choose to consider him the man who made the tough decisions no one else wanted to. After all, someone has to be the bad guy from time to time.