NASCAR is boring and we don't know why

There was actual drama last Sunday when Juan Pablo Montoya wrecked himself at the very end of the Brickyard 400, only to see teammate Jaime McMurray win. The best of times - car owner Chip Ganassi saw his cars win this year's Daytona 500, Indy 500 and Brickyard; McMurray is now only the third driver (with Dale Jarrett and Jimmie Johnson*) to win both the Daytona 500 and Brickyard - not bad for a guy who wasn't sure he'd have a ride this year. But the Ganassi car that should've won was Montoya, who dominated all day. Bittersweet. Not even the fact that Montoya's frusrated oversteering also took out Dale Jr. could make me angry at him, given the amount of shit he had to be feeling.

It's rare anymore that I'm biting my nails during the final laps. NASCAR's gotten kind of boring, and no one can really say why. Jalopnik gives it a shot, but there's still something missing. I have my own complaints. Sure, my driver has struggled to adjust to the "car or tommorrow," and wins are definitely interesting, but even that's not the whole story.

- My feelings about Jimmie Johnson aside (for the record, I hate him), it's just not very exciting when the same driver wins four championships in a row. If the Colts won four Super Bowls in a row, how many NFL fans would stop caring as much? If the Yankees won four World Series in a row, how would MLB fans react? Zzzzzzzz...

- Homogenization in general. Fans often complain that drivers are too stifled by their corporate sponsors, and that's probably a factor. But don't we WANT our drivers and their crews to be compensated? A million-dollar purse is a hell of a stake, too. Don't we LIKE being able to see flag-to-flag coverage of every race? That doesn't happen unless people with deep pockets believe in our sport. The downside is that sponsors seek out drivers that look good in commercials, regardless of their talent on the track. Ward Burton doesn't have a ride. Sterling Marlin doesn't have a ride. My hard-core crush Elliott Sadler is barely hanging on.

- Homogenization of the tracks themselves bores the hell out of me. I usually tune out this time of year because it seems like every race takes place at a flat 1.5- to two-mile flat track and zzzzzzzz..... Sorry. There's a reason Bristol sells out every race. Though the "car of tomorrow" has sapped some of Bristol's action, it's still a compelling race because of the track's small size and historic cachet. I understand the economic reality of a track owner wanting to build a track that attracts events other than NASCAR, but damn.

- Can we talk about the "car of tomorrow"? Safety=good. But the car sucks.

- Can we admit that NASCAR's steady move over the past 10 years away from tracks in the rural South was a mistake? Who the hell wants to spend Labor Day in BFE, California? And North Wilkesboro's just sitting there. Rockingham in February didn't bother anyone for decades - why did it suddenly become a problem?

- The gap between the haves and have-nots has grown, despite NASCAR's efforts to reduce costs through standardization of parts. The teams with resources can still buy more parts, do more testing and attract talent like Chad Knauss, who I don't think actually sleeps.

So, what to do about all of this? Maybe tracks should cut their ticket prices in half. Maybe hotels should stop requiring visitors to stay for a whole weekend. (Going to a Panthers game takes 12 hours out of my Sunday, max. Going to a race on the other side of the same city would suck up my entire weekend.) Maybe NASCAR should let teams take off the gloves, really, and build the cars however they want.

I've always believed that, attempts to brand the Daytona 500 as the "Super Bowl" aside, NASCAR most closely resembles pro golf. Hear me out. You have a series of events, for which members of a professional association must qualify in order to compete.

Why not embrace that? We already think of Daytona, Talladega, Bristol and the Brickyard as the marquee races. Why not formally declare that certain races are "majors," and that only those races are part of the points pool that determines the champion? A driver could still do the other races for money. There would be less pressure for a cash-strapped team to run every race, to drive that hauler to frakking Las Vegas only to go out on the fifth lap. And then the drivers, crews, et al, wouldn't be on the road nearly 40 weeks out of every year.

While we're at it, can we get some consistency in rules and penalties? This season has been a little better, because NASCAR is more laissez-faire when dealing with everyone. But when you have penalties that destroy one driver's championship hopes (um, a fine for cursing???) while being pretty much meaningless for another driver, it hurts the sport's credibility. Which brings me to that Jimmie Johnson asterisk up in the first paragraph.

Johnson "won" his Daytona 500 in a car so illegal it got his crew chief suspended for six races. Yet, thanks to a quirk in NASCAR rules, Johnson was allowed to race in the illegal car - and won. And nobody seemed to have a problem with this. It's like, if Ray Lewis came out of the locker room with a baseball bat and kneecapped Ben Roethlisberger in front of 70,000 people, and were still allowed to play the game, and the Ravens won, and Sportscenter was all "Yay, Ray Lewis! What a trouper he is!" You would shoot your TV, right? Welcome to my world.