Stock car racing playoffs sell the drama

By Ron Kantowski

Monday, Sept. 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.

It’s playoff time in NASCAR.

Actually, NASCAR doesn’t call the final 10 races of its season the playoffs, it calls them the Chase for the Championship. But it’s basically the same thing. It renders almost everything that happened during the regular season irrelevant. Just like in the stick-and-ball sports, which is what auto racing fans call baseball and football.

With playoffs, teams that finish 35 games over .500 in baseball are suddenly equal to those that finish 82-80. Teams that finish 15-1 in football receive a week off. Then they are equal to those that finish 9-7.

The Wild Card is a powerful thing.

The beauty of NASCAR — and auto racing in general — was until recently, it didn’t have playoffs. The driver who won the most races and/or accumulated the most points was crowned champion. The mechanics who worked on his car got rings, too. But first they had to get gussied up for the awards banquet. This is what kept the people who made white patent leather shoes in business.

For years and years and years the system worked better than a set of Craftsman wrenches. Then NASCAR got bigger than hockey. Then it got a national TV contract. Then it got a playoff system, because the people at the network insisted on it. Maybe auto racing playoffs won’t make the average fan turn away from the Eagles vs. the Packers. They could let Pamela Anderson and the Lohan sisters drive the cars — without their fire suits — and it wouldn’t make the average fan turn away from the Eagles vs. the Packers. But I suppose it was worth a shot.

This would explain why instead of being measured for a ring, and his crew being measured for patent leather loafers, Kyle Busch of Las Vegas will begin this week’s Sylvania 300 in New Hampshire — the first race in the Chase — with a 30-point lead, thanks to his series-leading eight victories. Thank goodness for those wins, or his lead would have been reduced to almost nothing after the points were reset for the playoffs.

A 30-point lead sounds like a lot, but in NASCAR it’s like laying a touchdown. In NASCAR, if you the win the race and lead the most laps, you get 195 points. If somebody isn’t looking where he is going and gets in your way — and you run into him — you could finish last, in which case you would get 34 points. Then your 30-point lead would be gone in sixty seconds, like Nicolas Cage. And then the next week you might as well stay home and watch the Eagles vs. the Packers, too.

Heading into Sunday’s race in Richmond, the last one before the points were reset, giving each of the 12 drivers who qualify for the playoffs 5,000 points, plus 10 additional points for each win, Busch had a 208-point lead. From here to Talladega.

I suppose it still would be possible for young Kyle to lose the championship if they played it out the old way. A lot of guys could get in his way and he could run into them. Or Dick Dastardly’s dog, Muttley, could sneak onto the grid and attach a grappling hook to young Kyle’s car when nobody was looking. Then when they dropped the green flag, Busch’s bumper would fall off, followed by the tires — just like in the cartoons. And then Dale Earnhardt Jr. might win.

Otherwise, the championship was pretty much in the bag. Then Kyle and older brother Kurt could have compared the size of their Cups. Kurt won the Nextel Cup, which is what it was called in 2004 — the first year they had stock car racing playoffs. Now it’s called the Sprint Cup, because if you think the points standings in NASCAR are constantly changing, try keeping up with the telecommunications business.

I remember where I was when Busch the elder won the championship — not that it was a seminal moment in my life, or anything like that. I was running around the NASCAR Cafe at the Sahara, like Robby Gordon trying to get back on the lead lap, trying to find somebody, anybody, who was cheering for Kurt.

Remind you, this was in his hometown, and although a lot of the people who were watching no doubt were tourists from Iowa, I still found the fact that most in the cafe were cheering against the hometown kid pretty sad. Because I can guarantee had this been the NCAA tournament instead of the NASCAR playoffs, the majority of the crowd would have been chanting REB-ELS, REB-ELS. Even on the Strip.

Stock car racing fans don’t care for the Busch brothers because they have heavy right feet and don’t mind rattling your cage, especially if it’s attached to your rear spoiler. They also will tell you where to go, either to your face or, when that’s not possible, with a certain finger. That mostly described Dale Earnhardt, too, but he grew up in North Carolina. The Busch brothers just moved there. There’s a difference.

Last week American Online released the results of a poll to determine the 50 Most Hated Figures in Sports. Kyle Busch made the list, at No. 50. Says AOL, “The 23-year-old has earned himself a reputation around NASCAR tracks as ‘Kid Conceited,’ professing he’d rather be hated for who he really is than to pretend to be someone he is not.” The caption appears under a picture of Busch wearing a goofy grin, like Adam Sandler in the movies.

This is why we, as collective Las Vegas sports fans, should consider switching away from the Eagles vs. the Packers during the next 10 weeks and cheer for young Kyle in the stock car racing playoffs.

Because if we don’t do it, nobody will.