Love Lost As 2009 NASCAR Season Looms

What has happened to the sport I fell in love with nearly 20 years ago?

What has happened to the anticipation I used to feel every Sunday morning during a season?

What has happened to the drivers, the tracks, and the owners that I had followed intensely for so many years?

To be honest I am not sure where they all have gone. I would like to believe they are still with me, in some form or another, but to be honest I am not terribly certain.

We are nearly on the eve of the 51st Annual Daytona 500, the pinnacle of our beloved NASCAR Sprint Cup season. And as we near this holiest of races the question must be asked—just what in the world is going on?

On a daily basis one can read about teams merging and buying points from one another to lock themselves in the field. Apparently it has become more important to have the funds to purchase a spot in the field rather than being able to race their way in.

Is it really fair that a driver like Clint Bowyer, a two time "Chase" contender, may be required to time in to the 500 while someone like John Andretti, a driver who has not run a full season in over five years with a team whom one could barely call a Cup team, is locked in?

NASCAR seems oblivious to these facets as we near the start of another NASCAR season. The sport is teetering on a very, very dangerous slope and NASCAR does not appear willing to recognize it.

The last few months have been a mockery of the sport that I once loved. It was difficult to adjust to the "Chase," the realignment and the Car of Tomorrow, but this is proving to be the most difficult of all to adjust to.

Perhaps it is a lack of leadership from the top which has propagated the current situation. An unwillingness to deviate from a, what was once, potent recipe for entertainment.

The thing is, that recipe no longer works and the little tweeks to fix it are only compounding matters. The sport is a mere shell of itself even compared to just five years ago.

So as the 2009 season looms, those aforementioned questions continually flood my mind. Already I have cut my viewership of races substantially over the past two years and after the 500 I find myself questioning the next race I will actually watch.

Because the sport I loved exists only in memories and YouTube clips. And that is, on an immense level, entirely depressing.