NASCAR's big chase leaves some fans steering clear

It's been a dozen years since the final race of the NASCAR season could promise this kind of suspense.

When the checkered flag drops Sunday with the Nextel Cup Chase championship on the line, three of the most popular drivers on the circuit are all within a few car lengths of current points leader Kurt Busch, and a fourth, sentimental favorite Mark Martin, could mathematically still pull off the upset.

So why are so many fans so upset with the playoff system that made it possible?

We'll get to some of those reasons in a moment, but first the short answer: Junior won't win.

NASCAR's biggest star by far could zoom into the winner's circle at Homestead, Fla., but the only way Dale Earnhardt Jr. makes up the point differential on the guys ahead of him -- Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon -- is if all three get stuck in line at a car wash on the way to the track.

Racing luck being what it is, crashes, blown engines or some other misfortune could sideline one, and maybe two of them. But Earnhardt knows the chances all three would have miserable days is way too much to expect, especially the way his luck has run at Homestead.

"The reality is, we didn't run good there last year," he said. "The test wasn't a 100 percent success. I don't live in a dream world. I know what the facts are."

Keep in mind that Earnhardt undercut his own chances in early October by including a curse word in his victory celebration just seconds after stepping out of his car at the fabled Talladega superspeedway. That little slip cost him $10,000 and, more important, 25 points in the Cup Chase.

Which brings up reason No. 2 why some fans have been slow to warm up to NASCAR's new playoff format: It smacks of manipulation.

Under the previous Cup system, the championship was a season-long affair that awarded consistency above all else. Drivers earned points depending on their finish in each of the 36 races, totaled them up at the end, and the leader walked off with the title. Typical of the way things have gone for a while, last year's champion was Matt Kenseth, who won exactly once, ran about seventh a lot, and drove very carefully to protect his lead the rest of the time.

This year, with a new sponsor aboard and a desire to juice up the end of its TV schedule -- when the races compete with NFL games and playoff baseball for ratings -- NASCAR boss Brian France made a radical change. They totaled up the points after the first 26 races, made only the top 10 eligible for the Chase, reset the points between them so the spread was only 45 with 10 races left in the season.

Measured by TV ratings, the changes didn't take with the fans, at least not right away. The first two races in the Chase lost viewers compared to a year earlier, but then spiked 21 percent at Atlanta three weeks ago. France predicts more of the same this weekend, and he's not the only one.

"It's going to be a heck of a shootout," Johnson said last weekend after winning the Southern 500, one of the wackiest races in a while. "NASCAR got what they wanted here."

NASCAR did. Still to be determined, though, is how much of the fan base feels the same way.

Some complained the playoff essentially wiped out the first two-thirds of the season, and made the final third almost irrelevant to all but 10 drivers. Some griped the points system punished one bad race too severely and others took the opposite side, arguing that it didn't allow for enough separation.

To make matters worse, some sponsors have started grumbling that even when their driver has a good day, most of the airtime is diverted to those drivers competing in the Chase.

France took it all in, then earlier this week tried to squash the debate by telling The Associated Press, "We always said we wanted to let the full year play out, but the balance we have now, we're real happy with. We may end up making some slight adjustments next season, but nothing very noticeable."

Just like the BCS guys who hijacked college football's postseason, France is about to learn how tough it is to stage-manage drama in sports. And just like the BCS guys, he's going to need some luck to end his season without a few thousand suggestions jamming NASCAR's inbox.

An upset win by Junior would get him off the hook, and he's probably in the clear if either Gordon or Johnson -- who's on a dazzling late-season charge -- make up enough ground to claim the Cup. But if Busch hangs on in anything but a classic, France will be hearing plenty about how this season's championship, for all the new hoops he made drivers and fans jump through, was more trouble than it was worth.

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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org