Daytona's SpeedWeeks beckons...and there's more to debate here than Dale Jr. and Saturday's Shootout

The piece raises several points, all worth some analysis.

1 - David Hill was wrong first when he suggested shorter races, because shorter races have never proven to be better or more popular; on the contrary the sport's most famous races have tended to be its longest - people still talk about the seven-hour World 600 of 1980 and the varied overtime races of the last few years have garnered a lot of attention.

2 - As for Saturday Night racing, this runs counter to the grassroots promotion the sport needs; Saturday Night Winston Cup drained audience away from local tracks and has been a reason for continuing shrinkage in short track racing around the country; it also has consistently failed to be a ratings winner. Grassroots promotion needs to include taking Cup OFF of Saturday nights and sticking it exclusively on Sunday afternoons.

3 - The decline in media coverage of the sport is fairly simple - there's little to nothing to cover than hasn't already been covered. Hendrick Motorsports has won six of the last ten series titles and only two other teams (Roush and JGR) have won titles in the last eleven seasons. Between runaway spending, the technology arms race, and NASCAR's lack of restriction on both, the sport has become a closed loop, with new car owners nowhere to be found and existing ones being absorbed into the three mega-organizations. And the racing outside of the plate tracks has generally continued to be The Dead Lane Era - it's been good in spots at Pocono and Fontana but the kind of sustained combat to win that was once the sport's standard is long gone, and NASCAR cannot figure out how to get it back (if anything its absurd obsession with points consistency constitutes a major ideological roadblock). Get back 50-lead-change racing at places like Pocono, Michigan, Charlotte, Atlanta, etc. and that will go a long way for the sport.

4 - The start times remains an issue as 1 PM starts have been pushed back to almost 1:30 and ESPN bullied NASCAR into reneging on its new start time policy for the playoffs, where 2:30 starts for East Coast races have returned even though those chased away a lot of fans. Start times need to be pushed forward, to where the green flies at 12:30 or earlier, where it is convenient for fans watching on TV AND attending in person.

Also an issue is the limited number of TV partners. The myth that fans were chased away because TV deals were done by the individual tracks instead of the central body led to the present deal and it hasn't worked. ESPN and SPEED should not have exclusive rights to BGN and the Trucks; FOX and CBS need to be brought into those series, while CBS also needs to be brought back to Cup.

5 - The NASCAR season has NEVER been too long - not in the 1960s-71 when it ended in December, not since then when latter November was the usual endpoint (the one time it ended in October was 1973 because Texas World Speedway and Ontario Motor Speedway either shut down (Texas) or were yanked off the schedule because of ownership issues (Ontario). That whole argument is nonsensical.

6 - The playoff format does not work, and fans see through it. It artificially locks out 3/4ths of the field from any top-ten points contention in the final ten races and reduces the title chase to a short gimmicky sprint in which no one has reason to fight to win; just keep it off the walls and in the top ten and that's it. That 2010 saw only the third time the point lead changed hands in the final race means nothing. It has drained the life out of the season.

If NASCAR is going to shift Cup races to Saturday night, they need to wait until at least October to do it. Adding more Saturday night races to the summer schedule kills your TV viewership and your grassroots racing. The two go hand in hand. Some people who otherwise might attend a local short track race might opt to stay home if the Cup race is on TV, and those who do go to the short track races would likely watch the Cup race if it was on the air on Sunday afternoon instead. Add up all of the fans at short track races on a Saturday night across the country and see how many viewers that totals up. It's pretty substantial. Wait until October when most of the short tracks are done with their Saturday night season and the NFL has taken over Sunday afternoon, and then your ratings ploy for Saturday night will work. Not that NASCAR seems to care about grassroots racing anymore, but they should care about the fans of who love grassroots racing because that's the majority of the people tuning in on TV to watch Cup races. Adding Saturday night races between Memorial Day and the end of September will not help NASCAR's ratings or NASCAR's image with real racing fans.
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There used to be a natural progression up the ranks from the short tracks to the Grand National Series, and then on to Cup. And you actually had to win races to get to the next level. Now that the sponsors help choose the drivers, the owners seek drivers just shedding their diapers, and NASCAR allowing Cup drivers to take over the AA and AAA feeder series, Cup racing is full of guys that did not progress up the ranks as they did in the old days. Why does that matter? Fans don't get a chance to see drivers work their way up the ranks anymore, and it alienates many fans who then are forced to watch drivers they have never heard of be given rides that they have not earned. NASCAR used to pump money into advertising into short track racing and they used to have regional series that drivers could move up to once they had some success in a late model at their home track. NASCAR has since folded the Dash series, all of their late model touring series, and the Grand National East and West series only run 12-14 races. I just shake my head at what NASCAR has done to local tracks and their feeder series', and the fact that they can't understand what's wrong with the state of the sport when what they did was shoot themselves in the foot. Brian France seems to care more about casual sports fans than he does true race fans, and he needs to understand that casual sports fans come and go. When you alienate the real race fans and push them away trying to capture casual sports fans with some sort of a gimmick, the real race fans may not come back once you screw it up.