NASCAR JUMPS THE SHARK: 15 Cars In The Chase?!

First it was Ten. Then Twelve.

Now Fifteen?!

A major sports media property had one of its writers come out yesterday and intimate that NASCAR might be getting ready to unleash the mother of all bad moves on the sport by making an elimination playoff for next year. This elimination chase would then end with a five car shootout at Homestead Miami when the season ends.

But it's not the elimination that's the real issue. It's the fact that the ever expanding field of "the best of the best" has bloated to nearly half the entire field with Fifteen drivers becoming eligible for the "Chase", If you can call it that anymore; it's hard to be chasing something elite when everyone who isn't elite is getting in.

Fifteen!

What started as a novel concept in 2004 has devolved into a joke so ridiculous that it threatens to make a complete mockery of the biggest motorsport in the nation: Having a playoff is one thing but having a gimmick that is badly disguised as a playoff is another. At one time the Chase was developed to compete against the NFL. But If NASCAR wants to compete against the NFL, maybe they should think like the NFL.

So let's put this into perspective: Take the 13th best team in the NFL.

The 13th place team doesn't play for the Superbowl. They don't even make the playoffs. The 13th place team in the NFL last year was the Houston Texans. How would it reflect the NFL to have a team worse than the Houston Texans playing in the Superbowl instead of, say, the Colts or the Saints who earned their way there through excellent regular season play? How would that enhance and not detract from the ultimate moment in that sport? It wouldn't. It would ruin it.

Well, that's exactly what NASCAR is proposing.

Fans aren't stupid, though NASCAR's higher ups seem to think they are. There's a reason the 12th place driver didn't make the top 10: It's because he was 12th best. Putting the 15th best car in the field to win a championship is a mockery to the sport. And, as they already have been, fans will continue to head where there's actual racing as opposed to fake "drama". More eyeballs will leave stock car's highest level and head either for open wheel country or other lower tiers (read ARCA) to get the racing they want.

The only question that remains --one which would have been ridiculous to propose only a few years ago though now in this day and age of endless tweaking is terribly plausible-- is that if Dale Jr. finishes 20th or lower in the next three years, will the NASCAR braintrust open up their playoff to 25 drivers in 2014?

Of course, many NASCAR fans would already tell you that there's a simple solution that would solve all this. A solution that would include Dale Jr. every year and would have not only 10, 12 or even 15 drivers in a championship battle:

It would have 43.

And would do away with the failed Chase altogether.