It makes sense to end the year at Daytona

Jim Huber

By Jim Huber, Turner Sports Interactive
January 22, 2002
4:28 PM EST (2128 GMT)

COMMENTARY

In case you hadn't noticed, there is a battle going on among some very large people for the right to play in pro football's biggest game.

It happens this time every year and you see an intensity and fire that you sometimes don't see all season long. Getting to the Super Bowl is the ultimate in a player's life. In stock-car racing, everybody gets to the Super Bowl. And then plays the season. What's up with that?

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Not that racing should be like pro football (or the NBA or NHL or MLB or any other sport that whittles it's contenders away until there are just two).

But having the biggest, splashiest race of the season right at the green flag --and letting every Tom, Dick and Little E in -- seems a bit backwards.

Certainly it is a wonderful way to kick off the campaign. No sport gets anywhere near the attention or scrutiny or fireworks on opening day as NASCAR.

But where do you go from the moutaintop? It's tough to leap from peak to peak, isn't it? And by the time you reach Homestead on a ho-hum November Sunday, have you lost a little emotional steam?

It's like taking a long breath, blowing it out immediately and then having to make do on your exhaust for the rest of the year.

Wouldn't it make more sense to build toward something? Kick off the season in a splashy way, certainly, but don't just race the rest of the year for points and cash and trophies but race to a final tumultuous, ear-splitting climax on the track?

How about Daytona to Daytona in ten furious months? One final championship race for all the marbles. Front-load them by points, however you want to handle that. But settle it in a best four-of-seven World Series week back where it all started a half-century ago.

The Daytona 500 is racing's biggest attraction. By far its most significant race. Shouldn't it also be the most important? End the year with it, then.

Probably makes too much sense.

I'm sure they all prefer tuxedos on Broadway at 8 p.m. for the final hurrah.

NOTE: Jim Huber's column appears every Tuesday on NASCAR.com and the opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.