If the Chase had to be changed..........

[dalejrgamer]

I could not disagree more. And as a lifelong NASCAR fan, the NFL doesn't exist on race day around my house. Oh, I might flip over there during a commercial, but the racing comes first, chief. And the season is just fine the length it is. Only little open-wheel sissies run short seasons.

I think you honestly miss the point. I'm talking about shortening the season from a CASUAL fan's standpoint. Really, who has the patience to watch the races week after week? You might, I might, but 90% of the 75 million fans (lol) probably don't. They'd watch football because there's nothing but baseball on from February (yeah, I know baseball season starts in April, but point stands) to August, where there's no NFL/college football to compete with.

And the OW comment is flat-out stupid. Did you know that it's possible to have a 40+ race season that you can only complete it in 25 weeks? Ask the Aussie V8s how. Nevermind the fact that OW cars are more fragile than stock cars.

 

[MattSRD28]

You can talk about how NASCAR would gain recognition. At the end of the day, once September hits, we all know what to watch (not NASCAR).

I love comments like this one.

So if we catch you making some comment about the race in September that you watched...what should we do?

I was saying that the Chase does, essentially throw away 2/3 of the season. In the past, if you wanted to be Champion, you had to be solid throughout the entire season. Now, you just have to be good enough to make the top 12, and try to be outstanding over the final 10 races. ... That, is what I am saying. The Chase manufactures a tight points race, when, in reality, 1-12 usually has people on very different levels, as far as how their season has gone.

Mike, look at the history of the Chase. What's the lowest in the standings someone has come from in order to be the champion? I'm pretty sure since the Chase started that no one's come from lower than 4th or 5th. That's not a giant leap from how it used to be. There was always the chance that the consistent teams would suddenly become inconsistent in the final races, and lose the title to a team that had been less consistent than them in the first 2/3's, but performed better in the last 1/3 of the season.

Perils and pitfalls have always been a part of the points system. The Chase did nothing to change that. While it's true that 12 teams will make the Chase, everyone knows that in reality, only top half at best have a real shot at being #1 10 races later and being the champion. Putting in a cutoff at race #26 gives the media something to talk about, sensationalize, and bring much needed attention to the sport. Yes it's an ultimately meaningless discussion, but just like the whole go or go home thing - it gives people something to talk about, and gives the teams a goal to shoot for.

I don't in anyway discredit Johnson for his 10 race stretches of brilliance. They are impressive and flat out amazing. I discredit him because I wonder where that rock solid consistency was for the first 7 months of the season. No question he deserved his "Chase titles"...but it is one thing to have the best, random, 10 race stretch of races, and quite another to be good all year long. All 36 races are essentially the same. You could, in fact, take any 10 race slice, and come up with a Champion from that. NASCAR didn't change the schedule in '04 and say, you 10 are special so you get to be our playoff tracks. No, they just said, hey, these are the last 10 races, lets partition them off and say whoever does the best here is our "champ".

Last year Jimmie Johnson ended race #26 3rd in the points. Are you seriously going to argue that a team need not be consistent in order to be 3rd in points after 26 races? Jimmie began the Chase tied for 2nd in points, 10 behind the leader who was Mark Martin. Mark started the Chase #1 because of his 4 wins, but his inconsistency had him 6th before the Chase reset. It was clear that Mark had to be more consistent than he had been if he was to become champion, but were it not for the Chase, Mark would have had no shot at all at being the champion. Mark ultimately did not increase his consistency enough in the Chase, and Tony Stewart's consistency really dropped off in the Chase, leaving Johnson, who did an amazing job in the Chase as the winner. Where is the inconsistency there? Where is the illegitimacy there? I can't find it. Nor can I find it in any other Chase battle in any other year since 2004. Therefore, all these silly arguments about how worthless the Chase is don't make any sense at all to me. The Chase hasn't corrupted the points system at all, and it has provided all the attention grabbers that Nascar could have ever asked for.

I understand why you keep coming back to this point, but it is wrong to a degree. NASCAR was nationalizing in the mid to late 90s, and early 2000s. Yes, it took off in '04 wen Sprint came on board, but I strongly feel that that has a lot less to do with the Chase, than it does the fact that Sprint was not Winston. Winston was connotative of the south, rednecks, and tobacco, which limited its reach to other audiences. As a nationalized, well known cell-phone provider, Sprint could cater its advertising to seek out untapped markets around the US and the world. Yes, the Chase is good for $$ right now, but like I said, there were other ways to approach the issue.

I remember what Nascar was doing in the 90s. I was there. It was taking off in awareness not just because of RJ Reynolds, but because of the increased media coverage from CBS, TNN, ESPN, ABC, TBS and others. RJ Reynolds brought prize money which drove media attention. That media attention drove more money into the sport which drove up the purses which drove up even more media attention, and so on it went until the prize money just became the arbitrary amount of millions that it is today.

When NEXTEL (not Sprint) signed on to replace RJ Reynolds, they promised to keep pushing the purse money even though the money wasn't really increasing awareness anymore. That was Nascar's biggest fear. They knew that the purse money wasn't bringing more fans into the sport like it had been, but they also couldn't bear to lose purse money either. So they gave NEXTEL a contract with a juicy clause promising none of their competitors could ever enter Nascar's Cup Series again. The ones that were already there could stay, but no more new ones for as long as NEXTEL sponsored the Cup Series. Nascar gave NEXTEL its own marketing playground, and that was enough increased value to make up for the difference caused by the purse money awareness plateau. Problem always was though that there was no longer anything that the title sponsor could do money-wise to increase awareness of Nascar.

NEXTEL, and after its merger with Sprint to become SprintNextel, has tried to be innovative in how fans could access Nascar content via phones, but it hasn't done anything that would attract someone into being interested in Nascar via its phone content. Nothing. Sprint was a loser phone company to start with, and after Nextel merged, Nextel lost a lot of its marketshare in business phones to at&t and Verizon via the iPhone and DROID phones. There can be exactly zero Nascar Cup Series content on those phones because SprintNextel has exclusivity there, but that's a largely irrelevant point given that fans simply aren't going to become Nascar fans because of anything mobile phone content related. The best that Sprint can hope for in return for their sponsorship is a similar brand loyalty that other Nascar sponsors enjoy. Problem is, I don't think even THAT is really happening given how superior products from Sprint's competitors currently are. Sprint's last hope is the 4G network, and even if that's a success, it'll likely work out just like NEXTEL's push to talk did. It was nice for a couple years, and then the competition caught up and left them in the dust. The day will come when SprintNextel looks at their Nascar sponsorship and declares that they can no longer afford it. Hopefully then, Nascar can find a stronger Cup Series title sponsor because Nascar desperately needs one.

People get tired of the same 1.5-2 mile d shaped ovals....which don't bring the best racing. NASCAR was at a point in the early 2000s wherein they could have started building new, non-cookie cutter tracks...they could have expanded to already built, different tracks...or expanded on tracks (i.e. Gateway, Pike's Peak, Mansfield, Disney). Instead, they go with expansion towards the same old, cut and paste, ovals that they always have.

That's what I was saying was basically a dead argument. Even if you're right, there's nothing that can be done about it now. It's unproductive to go down that line of thought except to say that shorter tracks should be the style that future tracks adopt, but like I said before, given the current conditions, I don't think anyone will invest the money necessary on such a risky venture.

NASCAR did not need the Chase to become nationally relevant. Sprint would have got them there. Expanding to other areas of the country, and showing off great on track action (like the trucks or the modifieds)...a grass roots campaign to showcase some of the hardest racing, in order to bolster interest on the national stage. That would have gotten them their too.

You must know a different Sprint than the one I know. The Sprint I know is basically struggling to survive and as such, likely won't go much beyond their contractual obligations. Nascar depends on their media partners for increasing awareness now, and even they have struggled to bring that. Sprint never had any hope of doing what you describe.

That's just the continuing public perception, via bafoons like those on ESPN and SportsCenter. They don't know racing, so they don't cover it very well. It will take time to break free of the positioning that NASCAR has in the non, and potential fan's mind...and ESPN/SC have never been helpful with that.

Wasn't espn what popularized nascar in the first place in the 90's?

Both Mike and Ben are correct here. In the 90s, ESPN did a huge service to Nascar in increasing awareness of the sport. Unfortunately, Nascar then alienated ESPN by giving the exclusive TV contracts not to ABC/ESPN, but to the unknown FOX, the unknown NBC, and the acknowledged sub-par to ESPN, TNT. It was a direct insult to the loyalty and efforts that ESPN made in their Nascar coverage. IMO, that was the biggest mistake Nascar has made in the last 50 years. The mistake wasn't in the creation an exclusive TV rights contract, but in who Nascar awarded the contract to.

ESPN lost big time in the bidding wars, and then was further alienated because the contract initially forbade ANYONE from even showing Cup Series racing in any form, be it highlights or whatever. ESPN couldn't show Cup Series racing on Sportscenter if it wanted to! That was quite the overnight change. It jarred ESPN so much that they basically stopped caring about Nascar, and started actively devaluing it because their competitors - FOX and NBC - were now going to benefit from anything ESPN did to put Nascar in a positive light. After a few years, a lot of those restrictions were lessened, but that did nothing to heal the open wounds created by the direct alienization of ESPN by Nascar and ESPN's competitors. Those dealings have left scars on both sides that will never heal.

Even awarding the next contract to ABC/ESPN didn't heal the scars. They're still there. After having to completely dismantle their Nascar coverage structure, ABC/ESPN has not been able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. ABC/ESPN producers to this day refuse to bring back Bob Jenkins after what took place in the aftermath of ESPN's losing the first TV rights contract. (Bob wasn't happy about it to say the least.) ABC/ESPN's coverage has managed to be adequate, but it's nothing like the attractor it once was. People were excited by ESPN's Speedworld, their Quest for the Cup standings, and their incredibly informative coverage. Today they merely talk in the same sort of boring superlatives and armchair quarterbacking that adds nothing to the story of what's going on that can be seen & heard in their coverage of other sports. How is Nascar going to grow if its coverage is basically just like the coverage of other sports? ABC/ESPN needs to learn that lesson and try to be more innovative and unique in their coverage, and how they bring that coverage to their viewers.

On topic, I think what nascar needs to do is to keep everything the same, except, the car that won the regular season starts 50 points ahead of the second place car going into the chase (that includes the wins for all the drivers except the first place team because they won the regular season and because the first place driver shouldn't start 150 points ahead of the second place driver). My system would create more excitement for the regular season, and would give credit to who won the reg. season. The chase would have the same excitement as it does now and for me, seems more fair.

I see where you're going there, but I fail to see how that would create more excitement in the regular season. At this point we basically know that Harvick is going to be #1 going into the Chase. How would changing his "bonus" for being #1 after race #26 change the fact that we already know who's getting the bonus? The real excitement would come from finding out who gets the bonus. If we already know who's going to be #1 five or more races before race #26, then who cares?

People get caught up in the Chase not where it begins, but where it ends. The cream always rises to the top in any format. What the Chase does a good job of is allowing said cream to rise without the arbitrary barrier of a points lead that was created 6 months prior to the concluding races of the season. People want to see who's the real best of the best. The seeding according to wins via 10 points per win is a great place to start. From there, the true champion will emerge, and we'll all be watching with far more baited breath than we'd had if all we were watching for is Harvick having some trouble that would close the points gap. That's where the Chase concept enjoys its success.

 

[Mike24]

Mike, look at the history of the Chase. What's the lowest in the standings someone has come from in order to be the champion? I'm pretty sure since the Chase started that no one's come from lower than 4th or 5th. That's not a giant leap from how it used to be. There was always the chance that the consistent teams would suddenly become inconsistent in the final races, and lose the title to a team that had been less consistent than them in the first 2/3's, but performed better in the last 1/3 of the season.

Yes, there is always a chance, but really, how often has that happened, wherein the points leader at the 2/3 mark, who has build an insurmountable lead, loses everything? At that point, you put it in top 10-15 mode, and cruise to the title you've earned.

I love comments like this one.
Last year Jimmie Johnson ended race #26 3rd in the points. Are you seriously going to argue that a team need not be consistent in order to be 3rd in points after 26 races? Jimmie began the Chase tied for 2nd in points, 10 behind the leader who was Mark Martin. Mark started the Chase #1 because of his 4 wins, but his inconsistency had him 6th before the Chase reset. It was clear that Mark had to be more consistent than he had been if he was to become champion, but were it not for the Chase, Mark would have had no shot at all at being the champion. Mark ultimately did not increase his consistency enough in the Chase, and Tony Stewart's consistency really dropped off in the Chase, leaving Johnson, who did an amazing job in the Chase as the winner. Where is the inconsistency there? Where is the illegitimacy there? I can't find it. Nor can I find it in any other Chase battle in any other year since 2004. Therefore, all these silly arguments about how worthless the Chase is don't make any sense at all to me. The Chase hasn't corrupted the points system at all, and it has provided all the attention grabbers that Nascar could have ever asked for.

Yes, he was 3rd in points, but how far behind from the lead was he? NASCAR.com's standings only show up until after race 25, but at that point, he was 290 points out of the lead. That is not nearly showing the level of consistency that Tony, the leader, showed. Liken that same example to this year. Harvick has been flat out untouchable, and Johnson and Hamlin (both streaky with 5 wins) are 386 and 353 points back, respectively. They have not been the epitome of consistency, which the season long champion should be. That, Matt, is my argument. Yes, Johnson was consistent enough for 3rd (290 back), but he wasn't rock solid enough to be title worthy at that point.

Yes, I know Johnson lit it up down the final 10 race stretch, while Stewart fell off...and we don't know how it would have played out sans Chase, but if Johnson was really worthy of the title, he would have had to dig himself out of that 290 point hole, rather than starting even with Tony, and then blowing him away.

Mark's Chase? I love Mark, he's one of my favorite drivers...but he had no place battling for a title when he barely had the consistency to hang onto the top 10 in points over the first 2/3 of the year. People have gotten hot at the end of seasons, building for the next year, after being well out of the hunt...and that was the kind of run Mark had (albeit with the incentive to go for a title).

When NEXTEL (not Sprint) signed on to replace RJ Reynolds, they promised to keep pushing the purse money even though the money wasn't really increasing awareness anymore. That was Nascar's biggest fear. They knew that the purse money wasn't bringing more fans into the sport like it had been, but they also couldn't bear to lose purse money either. So they gave NEXTEL a contract with a juicy clause promising none of their competitors could ever enter Nascar's Cup Series again. The ones that were already there could stay, but no more new ones for as long as NEXTEL sponsored the Cup Series. Nascar gave NEXTEL its own marketing playground, and that was enough increased value to make up for the difference caused by the purse money awareness plateau. Problem always was though that there was no longer anything that the title sponsor could do money-wise to increase awareness of Nascar.

NEXTEL, and after its merger with Sprint to become SprintNextel, has tried to be innovative in how fans could access Nascar content via phones, but it hasn't done anything that would attract someone into being interested in Nascar via its phone content. Nothing. Sprint was a loser phone company to start with, and after Nextel merged, Nextel lost a lot of its marketshare in business phones to at&t and Verizon via the iPhone and DROID phones. There can be exactly zero Nascar Cup Series content on those phones because SprintNextel has exclusivity there, but that's a largely irrelevant point given that fans simply aren't going to become Nascar fans because of anything mobile phone content related. The best that Sprint can hope for in return for their sponsorship is a similar brand loyalty that other Nascar sponsors enjoy. Problem is, I don't think even THAT is really happening given how superior products from Sprint's competitors currently are. Sprint's last hope is the 4G network, and even if that's a success, it'll likely work out just like NEXTEL's push to talk did. It was nice for a couple years, and then the competition caught up and left them in the dust. The day will come when SprintNextel looks at their Nascar sponsorship and declares that they can no longer afford it. Hopefully then, Nascar can find a stronger Cup Series title sponsor because Nascar desperately needs one.

I know it was Nextel. Give me some credit. I was simplifying it down, as they are now the same company.

I was not talking about what Sprint has done, as compared to what they could have done to expand interest. Sprint, as a cell phone company, has far greater reach than Winston had. They don't necessarily even need to do it, though it would be the best way and as you said has failed to some degree, through their cell phones. Via their reach as a sponsor without an age limit, Sprint could have very well found some way with their and NASCAR's marketing expertise, to reach out and find audiences, and draw interest around the country.

That's what I was saying was basically a dead argument. Even if you're right, there's nothing that can be done about it now. It's unproductive to go down that line of thought except to say that shorter tracks should be the style that future tracks adopt, but like I said before, given the current conditions, I don't think anyone will invest the money necessary on such a risky venture.

Again, speaking hypothetically as to what could have happened (and would have been better IMO), sans Chase.

You must know a different Sprint than the one I know. The Sprint I know is basically struggling to survive and as such, likely won't go much beyond their contractual obligations. Nascar depends on their media partners for increasing awareness now, and even they have struggled to bring that. Sprint never had any hope of doing what you describe.

Not realistic in today's climate, yes, but seriously, how difficult would it have been for Sprint and NASCAR to have began the "Home tracks" campaign earlier on, and to have intensified it to drive fans to their local short track in attempts to bolster interest on a national level? Not that hard. I know local tracks are struggling to survive today, but had this campaign started before the large downfall, as opposed to after, they may have been able to help improve interest on both the local and national level. Campaigns like "you could be watching these guys on a national stage" could really peak interest. In the northeast, I grew up watching Ted Christopher, Stefanik (nationally successful in modifieds, Kobyluck, Truex Jr., Lia, and all of the Busch North stars...many of whom have done good things on a national stage. This would be an even greater campaign with the large amount of Cup series developmental drivers in the Camping World East series.

People get caught up in the Chase not where it begins, but where it ends. The cream always rises to the top in any format. What the Chase does a good job of is allowing said cream to rise without the arbitrary barrier of a points lead that was created 6 months prior to the concluding races of the season. People want to see who's the real best of the best. The seeding according to wins via 10 points per win is a great place to start. From there, the true champion will emerge, and we'll all be watching with far more baited breath than we'd had if all we were watching for is Harvick having some trouble that would close the points gap. That's where the Chase concept enjoys its success.

In my opinion, 10 bonus points per win is fine.

But you NEED to award consistency and finishing position in the first 2/3 of the season, in some way. Accompany the 10 points per win with the 5050-5000 scale (or in my opinion 5200-5000) that was used to seed drivers during the Chase's first couple of years.








Matt, I really enjoy this back and forth banter. We may disagree in principle on the Chase's necessity, but its nice to see someone with a much different view than my own, and all of the logic behind it.