A lot of the legitimacy concerns could be addressed with a 3 race final round. If you want to use the 10 race playoff structure, just have the first race be its own round. Playoff points will protect the front runners and the four who drop after one race likely wouldn’t have gone far anyway.
Sorry about that guys. The election ended so I had to get a job to fill the gap before the next cycle starts. I was really hopeful about this new pace car gig. I was too busy arguing with people down in The Podium and forgot to turn down pit road.
Back to LinkedIn I guess…
The problem here is that your central thesis doesn’t hold water. NASCAR’s viewership peaked AFTER the creation of The Chase. There has never been any proof that the Chase/Playoffs has resulted in a decline in viewership. The decline in viewership more closely coincided with the intro of the COT...
If I were NASCAR, I would keep the playoffs. The officiating can be hopelessly incompetent but the fans will just blame the playoffs. It’s the perfect shield against actual accountability. Everything is the fault of the “playoffs.”
Are you being held captive and forced to watch every week? In the almost 10 years I have been here, I have never seen you actually enjoy NASCAR racing. At some point, you need to cut your losses and find a new way to spend your Sundays.
A couple of years ago, I said that banning the Hail Melon would inevitably result in NASCAR having to make a judgment call that pisses people off…
And here we are.