Top-35 rule hurts sponsors it was designed to protect

The impetus was one night three years ago in Hampton, Ga., when 58 cars showed up to try and squeeze themselves into the field for a 2004 fall race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Of those that didn't make it, two were high-priced casualties: the No. 10 of MBV Motorsports, and the No. 22 of Bill Davis Racing. They were bumped by the likes of Tony Raines and Todd Bodine, piloting vehicles fielded by owners no one would recognize and backed by sponsors no one would remember.

• Send David your thoughts

The fact that Scott Riggs and Scott Wimmer drove two of those cars that went home early didn't really matter. The fact that they were sponsored by Valvoline and Caterpillar -- two companies with long and rather distinguished histories of backing cars in NASCAR's top series -- did. Change was spurred, and by the beginning of the next season there was a new rule in the Nextel Cup Series. In order to protect the sponsors that were the lifeblood of the sport, in order to prevent DuPont or Home Depot from becoming the next Valvoline or Caterpillar, the top 35 cars in owner points would henceforth be guaranteed starting spots in that weekend's event.

It was implemented with all the best of intentions. NASCAR, more than any other big-league professional sport, needs sponsorship to survive. Without it, cars sit immobile, half-assembled in darkened shops. Sponsors have to be kept happy, and the way you keep them happy is to make sure they're in the race on Sunday, with their logos appearing prominently on television. Watching their cars loaded onto a truck on Friday evening doesn't sit well with companies that pay between $10 and $20 million annually on what's essentially a 190 mph advertising campaign.

So it's easy to see why NASCAR did it. You want to make sure high-dollar sponsors stay in the sport? Make sure they're in the races. But three years later, the rule change seems short-sighted. In many ways, the NASCAR of late 2007 is very different from the one of late 2004. Economic and competitive environments have changed. Now, the top-35 rule is harming the very entities it was designed to protect.

In 2004, sponsors needed protecting. The sport was still feeling the aftereffects of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, which sent the economy into a tailspin and forced a number of companies to slash their marketing budgets. Companies that once sponsored racecars -- like Amoco, Exide, McDonald's, Conseco, Kodiak, K-Mart and others -- got out of the sport altogether or assumed less visible, less expensive roles. The heady days of only a few years earlier, when Pfizer and UPS jumped in with huge deals that raised sponsorship rates to unprecedented heights, were over. Teams were taking what they could get, which sometimes wasn't very much at all.

Some teams, like those owned by Andy Petree, Mark Melling and Junie Donlavey, either suspended operations, scaled back, or slowly began to fade away. This was the era of the field fillers, when shoestring drivers like Carl Long and Kirk Shelmerdine made races just by showing up, because there were only as many qualifiers as there were positions on the starting grid. Some teams came to the track without pit crews. They didn't need them. At Rockingham, Joe Ruttman took one lap and parked it. He and owner James Finch collected $54,196 for an easy day's work. (Continued)