Would you rather the old way or the chase playoffs?

Would you rather nascar stick with the playoffs or go back to the old way?

  • Chase

    Votes: 14 30.4%

  • Old way

    Votes: 32 69.6%
  • Total voters
    46
Before the playoff system the championship was usually down to a couple drivers by September. The first playoff system - you were out after one bad race. The current system mimics a the playoff systems used by other sports and I find it more entertaining.
 
Old way. Those season long point battles were so fun, every race was a playoff race. And if a driver wrapped up the title early.... thats too bad, maybe your favorite team and driver should have tried harder to prevent that from happening. The current playoffs are not the worst thing in the world either, I hate it but at least I know what I am getting at this point, its been since 14 they've done this? The 10 race to go points reset is less jarring at this point as they've been doing it going on 20 seasons now, so it is what it is. I still hate the number placement on the cars more now ha ha but I'm not winning that one either. I have fun during the playoffs now, its like the NBC fellas become a parody of themselves and its amusing, so keep the playoffs......unless they want to try a full season one again lol.
 
Playoffs 100%. Call it manufactured or whatever pointless criticism you have, everyone plays by the same rules and it definitely increases intensity of the racing. I don't care HOW it gets done as long as it puts the pressure on the driver and team to perform.
 
Surprised to see our forum split roughly 1/3rd in favor of Playoffs and 2/3rds against. When I came here 10 years ago 90% or so were against.

The times, they are a changin,
 
Speedbowl14 said:
Surprised to see our forum split roughly 1/3rd in favor of Playoffs and 2/3rds against. When I came here 10 years ago 90% or so were against.

The times, they are a changin,
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Doesn't surprise me. If you got into NASCAR since 2004, you have gotten into it with some "playoff" format and it's gonna be what you're used to. That said, you can have both the approval rate for a playoff series dramatically increase while general interest in the sport dramatically decreases. ;)
 
This ^ appears to suggest that general interest in the sport is in dramatic decline.

Is that what you intended to say?
 
aunty dive said:
This ^ appears to suggest that general interest in the sport is in dramatic decline.

Is that what you intended to say?
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They're racing spec Dallara chassis at a street course this weekend for some reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Zerkfitting said:
Before the playoff system the championship was usually down to a couple drivers by September. The first playoff system - you were out after one bad race. The current system mimics a the playoff systems used by other sports and I find it more entertaining.
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Yea, but auto racing isn't a stick and ball sport. It's 30+ drivers competing week in and week out against each other on the same surface for a chance to win one event. That's like saying the NFL should have all the teams compete week in and week out on the same field, it's apple to oranges. There's a reason NASCAR (and some local short tracks now) are the only ones in auto racing doing a playoff format system.

Also, there's been some very good points battle that came down to the last race of the season, it doesn't happen every season but does it really need to? We remember the races that had a nail biting finish and the seasons that came down to the wire because of the rarity. Now it happens almost every race and every season comes down to the last race, it's not as special.

Honestly the only Championship battle I still remember in the Playoff Era is the 2011 battle between Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards. It was a battle between wins and consistency. It was an engaging story line that held my interest until Homestead when Tony Stewart ultimately won the title.
 
aunty dive said:
The non-response response.

Predictable.
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It is what it is. They've clearly, objectively, indisputably lost a lot of fans and are needing to cater to younger people and engage them. We can argue about it all day long but it doesn't change much.
 
virtualbalboa said:
It is what it is. They've clearly, objectively, indisputably lost a lot of fans and are needing to cater to younger people and engage them. We can argue about it all day long but it doesn't change much.
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You can argue with yourself. Picking one element out of many factors is a waste of time IMO. There is no proof of that being so.
 
virtualbalboa said:
It is what it is. They've clearly, objectively, indisputably lost a lot of fans and are needing to cater to younger people and engage them. We can argue about it all day long but it doesn't change much.
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There’s nothing to argue about.

Every professional sport looks for ways to attract interest among younger people. Advertisers prefer that demographic and last time I checked, older people were still dying.
 
StandOnIt said:
You can argue with yourself. Picking one element out of many factors is a waste of time IMO. There is no proof of that being so.
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I would absolutely agree that there are a large number of factors. That said, look: statistically speaking, the audience shrunk by 60%. Most of those people were engaged with the sport pre-chase because, well, that's when the audience was growing. The people who left watching probably didn't love a playoff system, or at least didn't like it enough to be retained over time. I don't see how that's particularly disputable. The people who do love watching NASCAR in 2023 probably at least like the idea of the playoff otherwise they might have stopped watching. That doesn't mean the audience didn't decrease. It did decrease. If it hadn't, NASCAR wouldn't be trying their darndest to turn Chicagoland Speedway into a logistics hub.

I'm not telling anyone that they're wrong for liking it. You can enjoy the heck out of 2023 Cup. I'm not interested in telling anyone otherwise.
 
virtualbalboa said:
It is what it is. They've clearly, objectively, indisputably lost a lot of fans and are needing to cater to younger people and engage them. We can argue about it all day long but it doesn't change much.
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Honestly, you cater to younger fans by treating them with some respect and intelligence. Younger fans want more in-dept and analytical take on NASCAR races. There needs to be more focus on storylines that develops over a season, people of all ages like a good story. Like, honestly Ross Chastain has a good story line going right now with him wrecking early in the season but now he won a race. Who's still mad at Ross, who should he be careful with in the next race. Talk about drivers and teams that made overall improvements over the season and where they're running at in the current race. Stuff like that.

Talk about things like the track changing and what that'll do to the handling of the cars throughout a 400-500 mile race. Get a little bit more in depth with the changes teams make to their cars on pit row and what that means for the next segment of the race. Okay, Alan Gustafson is making an air pressure adjustment on Chase's car, but why and what will that do for Chase? Fox News and NBC has all these fancy graphics and 3D model of the NextGen car but Fox News barely used it.

Millennials (although we're not the "young" people anymore) and Gen Z want to get into the meat and potatoes of NASCAR, give it to us!
 
virtualbalboa said:
I would absolutely agree that there are a large number of factors. That said, look: statistically speaking, the audience shrunk by 60%. Most of those people were engaged with the sport pre-chase because, well, that's when the audience was growing. The people who left watching probably didn't love a playoff system, or at least didn't like it enough to be retained over time. I don't see how that's particularly disputable. The people who do love watching NASCAR in 2023 probably at least like the idea of the playoff otherwise they might have stopped watching. That doesn't mean the audience didn't decrease. It did decrease. If it hadn't, NASCAR wouldn't be trying their darndest to turn Chicagoland Speedway into a logistics hub.

I'm not telling anyone that they're wrong for liking it. You can enjoy the heck out of 2023 Cup. I'm not interested in telling anyone otherwise.
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If that story works for you use it. Like I said there are many factors involved and a simplistic answer to a complicated situation works for some.
 
StandOnIt said:
If that story works for you use it. Like I said there are many factors involved and a simplistic answer to a complicated situation works for some.
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All I'm saying is that people who are watching something probably enjoy that something, and people who no longer watch that something probably don't enjoy it. You would expect that polling of those populations would lead to certain conclusions over time. I'm not trying to make this into one of another endless line of bitch/moan threads online re: NASCAR.
 
Since we're discussing it... NASCAR was a fad.... that's it. There is no correlation to the sports growth/decline and Sr's death, implementation of the Chase, the COT, domination of the cookie cutter tracks, or Johnson's dominance.
 
Speedbowl14 said:
Since we're discussing it... NASCAR was a fad.... that's it. There is no correlation to the sports growth/decline and Sr's death, implementation of the Chase, the COT, domination of the cookie cutter tracks, or Johnson's dominance.
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I wouldn’t wholly attribute the decline to those but I also wouldn’t say there isn’t any correlation. All of those factors likely contributed to some degree, however big or small. It was a multitude of things.
 
I probably know less about stick and ball than anybody here. But in the last 20 years or so, I don't know of one sport that hasn't made numerous changes. Stick and Balls are simplistic sports for the most part, racing isn't. Baby Boomers who were responsible for the boom in Nascar are older and some have left the building, Nascar is very expensive, the car culture has been drastically reduced, the middle class declined, on and on. All of these and more affect Auto sports. Stick and Ball gets community and government help. Autosports gets lawsuits, noise complaints, Tax expenses leading to shopping malls as urban sprawl raises property values..Stick and ball just gets bond issues and moves to another city and starts the same thing going there. Comparing the two doesn't work. Apples and oranges.
 
StandOnIt said:
I probably know less about stick and ball than anybody here. But in the last 20 years or so, I don't know of one sport that hasn't made numerous changes. Stick and Balls are simplistic sports for the most part, racing isn't. Baby Boomers who were responsible for the boom in Nascar are older and some have left the building, Nascar is very expensive, the car culture has been drastically reduced, the middle class declined, on and on. All of these and more affect Auto sports. Stick and Ball gets community and government help. Autosports gets lawsuits, noise complaints, Tax expenses leading to shopping malls as urban sprawl raises property values..Stick and ball just gets bond issues and moves to another city and starts the same thing going there. Comparing the two doesn't work. Apples and oranges.
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I could nit pick stuff to death but at the end of the day, yes, auto racing and more traditional stick & ball sports are apples and oranges. Some stick and ball sports have done better in adjusting to the new world of content distribution than others, but ultimately they're all very different than racing. There's no shortage of ways to illustrate that.
 
My pet Peeve with the chase is the announcing. The gerbils and the cameras will spend all kinds of time following a car struggling to make the "cut line" They almost tell the audience what he had for breakfast. Meanwhile there is a race going on with real contenders not someone who if by miracle they advance to the next round, they don't have a prayer in hell of advancing any farther. The race loses continuity as far as I am concerned. Racing doesn't normally follow somebody in 13th place.
 
I prefer the old way but the anti-Chase hysteria is ridiculous. It’s here, has been for 20 years, and drivers prep their seasons around it. Jimmie and Chad used to sandbag in order to test new **** once they were locked. You change the incentive structure and that behavior changes.

Drivers and teams have to respond to what they’re given. If you can’t do that then you don’t deserve to be champion.
 
I think the stages has changed the sandbagging. They have two cautions that are set in stone, points awarded, and they have to drive their asses off the whole race because of them.
 
virtualbalboa said:
auto racing and more traditional stick & ball sports are apples and oranges.
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Aren’t any two sports apples and oranges though? What do tennis and football have in common? Lacrosse and golf?

When race fans throw up the “racing is different than stick and ball” flag, it just seems very snowflake-ish to me. Racing isn’t a special snowflake, it has its own rules and tools (in this case, a car) that can be used to fulfill the rules. Every sport has quirks.
 
The Nature Boy said:
I prefer the old way but the anti-Chase hysteria is ridiculous. It’s here, has been for 20 years, and drivers prep their seasons around it. Jimmie and Chad used to sandbag in order to test new **** once they were locked. You change the incentive structure and that behavior changes.

Drivers and teams have to respond to what they’re given. If you can’t do that then you don’t deserve to be champion.
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I agree with every word until the last sentence, but that's because of a qualitative judgement on my part. The rest is objectively true. I just liked highlighting one specific part for no particular reason. :cool:
 
StandOnIt said:
Your new here, you can highlight any damn thing ya want lol.
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Oh, there's a reason obviously, I just wonder how many people will catch on as to what it is!

I don't want to dwell on what makes NASCAR different than, say, MLB, but I'll say this. Yes, the Mets signed Tim Tebow because they wanted to sell jerseys with his name on 'em (even if he just played in the minors). That's not the same as putting someone's talentless child in a big time race car because he brings a check. Little Caesars' VP of Marketing doesn't tell the Red Wings who the starting lines are.
 
StandOnIt said:
My pet Peeve with the chase is the announcing. The gerbils and the cameras will spend all kinds of time following a car struggling to make the "cut line" They almost tell the audience what he had for breakfast. Meanwhile there is a race going on with real contenders not someone who if by miracle they advance to the next round, they don't have a prayer in hell of advancing any farther. The race loses continuity as far as I am concerned. Racing doesn't normally follow somebody in 13th place.
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Playoff Points, Playoff Implications, Prawblems, forgetting about non playoff cars all race..... I'm here for NBC's Anarchy.
 
Jorge De Guzman said:
Playoff Points, Playoff Implications, Prawblems, forgetting about non playoff cars all race..... I'm here for NBC's Anarchy.
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Yep the last few races are pretty bizarre. They don't have to be that way either. It's all cooked up by NBC in their part of the racing season. If it was a ratings boom it would be justifiable, but it doesn't move the needle.
 
Speedbowl14 said:
Since we're discussing it... NASCAR was a fad.... that's it. There is no correlation to the sports growth/decline and Sr's death, implementation of the Chase, the COT, domination of the cookie cutter tracks, or Johnson's dominance.
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It was already the largest spectator sport in the late-90s and early-2000s, but one thing people overlook about the explosive growth of that time is Fox Sports. They made NASCAR cool. Fox was known for "cool" and "edgy" programming and "cutting edge" sports coverage.

Fox turned NASCAR racing into Must See TV.
 
I got nothing against the playoff structure, but the gerbs at the first stage spend 5 minutes telling us if so in so finishes 10 he will make the cutoff if this other driver finishes 16 or worse and there is 2 thirds of the freaking race left. Then the gerbs $hit themselves if something happens. And I'm thinking I had to listen to this B.S. for 5 minutes? Wait until the end parts of the race to come up with their guesses.
 
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