NASCAR continues to tinker with at least two of its top three series at the risk of alienating more fans.
Why do they do this? The fans of the Sprint Cup Series had just become accustomed to The Chase, the Lucky Dog, the Shotgun Start, and (unfortunately) the Car of Tomorrow (which properly should be called the Car of Today) in the Sprint Cup Series and what do they do? Talk is they are going to revamp the points system. You know the one created by Bob Latford in 1975 that rewarded consistency over the entire season. What they’ve come up with, according to the Associated Press, is a system that would give the winner of the race 43 points. Each position thereafter would receive one less point than the position ahead of it. In other words, the team/driver that finished second would receive 42 points and the third place team/driver would get 41 points. Last place would yield 1 point.
The problem with all of this is that these changes are manufactured to attain a goal that takes us far away from the traditions of the sport. Take the Nationwide Series for instance. According to drivers who already applied for their licenses, they have to choose only one series to run for the championship. No more running for the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series the same season. The point of this is to eliminate the championship going to a Sprint Cup regular, but guess what? It may happen anyway.
If you look at the list of probable Nationwide Series entrants, one name just jumps out at you. Elliott Sadler. Yep, the guy who has been a regular on the Sprint Cup Series for a long time. He even has three wins in Sprint Cup competition, driving for the Wood Brothers, Robert Yates Racing, and the Ray Evernham, George Gillette, and Richard Petty Motorsports teams. Last year, he decided to leave RPM and wound up in the Nationwide Series driving for Kevin Harvick Motorsports, one of the most powerful Nationwide Series teams. He will run for the championship and has to be the odds-on favorite. Imagine that.
The rumored points system would attempt to make a closer championship race, giving the fans what Brian France calls a “seventh game experience.” Funny he would use a baseball term; I always thought the NFL was the target. Regardless, it would mean that a top driver can have a bad day, win the next week, and not be so far behind in the series standings. Other changes could be ten drivers qualifying for the Chase with the two top winners, if they are not part of the top ten taking positions 11 and 12. Once again manufacturing the close finish might have the same appeal to fans that those other ideas in my first paragraph (with the exception of Shotgun Starts) did. They will be yawning. As I’ve said before, most of the older base of fans will consider it a bastardization of their sport, younger fans will continue to turn the channel because they don’t know what the rules are, and both will eventually watch the NBA, MLB or the NFL. And they will wonder why.
If we look at the history of the last decade, NASCAR had a good product that was growing year after year. Television ratings were high and crowds at the track were large. Things started to decline before the Great Recession of 2008, and that event and the constant changes designed to “make things better” turned the base fan away. They haven’t returned. And with gasoline prices rumored to be $4.00 per gallon by May, look for more of the same.
Where does all of this leave us? I’ve long had a problem with Sprint Cup drivers and powerhouse teams (Childress or one of his farm teams, Roush-Fenway, Penske, Gibbs, and Hendrick) dominating the Nationwide Series, but was this the answer? Nationwide Series races are not as well attended as Sprint Cup races, but you can bet the absence of Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, and Kyle Busch won’t help any. This will all play out, but I don’t have a good feeling about it. The new points system, if rumors are true, may make for a close finish or it may be a runaway. So, nothing has changed except confusion to the fan base. From 2004 until today, NASCAR has been confusing its fans. Yes, the economy is bad, but people resist change. It confuses the young and confounds the old. And the beat goes on.
