Sorry for the lack of posts recently. It's been a bit on the busy side around here the past few weeks. Now that its fall I'm sure I'll have a lot to post about since it's also football season. However, today's Blog is on a different sport.

The chase in NASCAR has got to be one of the most manufactured excitement rules in all of sports. Next to college football overtime (which I love) and the green-white-checkered rule in NASCAR (which I hate) there isn't another rule that automatically gives excitement like the chase. With that said, I still like it.

Here's the main reason I like it. Usually I would lose interest in NASCAR with about 10 races to go because my favorite drivers (Mark Martin and Tony Stewart) would be out of the running for a championship. Sure I would watch the end of races, but I would pretty much ignore the other parts and watch football. Or I would do the famous flip back and forth on commercials. Now I find myself losing interest in the middle of the season, only to be pulled back in with ten races to go.

Here's another thing that the Chase offers to NASCAR. It is a playoff system and that can be used as a statistic to rate drivers. Here's an example. We all know how great drivers like Richard Petty (7 championships), Dale Earnhardt (7 championships) and Jeff Gordon (4 championships), but do we know how good of drivers people like Mark Martin, Greg Biffle or Clint Bowyer really are (all drivers with a few wins, no championships, but are always front runners)? This gives another statistic to say that this driver has made 10 chases in a row. This allows for NASCAR to promote more of their great drivers, not just their champions, just as the NBA, NFL, NHL, and NCAA do.

With that said. Maybe NASCAR could make the chase a bit better. As I said before I lost interest about 1/3 of the way through the season now rather than halfway. If memory serves me right the NASCAR season is 36 races long. What if we had three cutoffs? We could go down to 30 with 30 to go and reset everyone to zero points and give the winner their 10 point bonus. We'd do the same at 20 races to go and 10 races to go and then crown a champion. How's that for manufactured excitement?