Everyone, it seems, is waiting breathlessly for Bruton Smith's next move. Will he orchestrate a hostile takeover of Dover International Speedway and move both Sprint Cup dates to his new track in Kentucky? Will he throw $500 million at the Mattioli family to buy Pocono Raceway? Will he change his last name to George and grab a piece of Indianapolis? Will he move another race to Las Vegas? Will he turn New Hampshire Motor Speedway into a domed half-mile dirt track? Will he sell off all of his holdings, and spend the remainder of his years fishing barefoot and shirtless in Sri Lanka?

Who knows. The imperial czar of Speedway Motorsports Inc. now has eight Sprint Cup tracks and 12 race dates at his disposal, and is on the hunt for more of each. You get the feeling that if Smith had his way, there'd be another event in Las Vegas, two still in New Hampshire, and at least one in Kentucky, a combination that almost certainly would come at the expense of other venues. It seems that a substantial portion of the Sprint Cup schedule is being made up not by NASCAR, but the billionaire car dealer whose personal interests sometimes run contrary to those in Daytona Beach.

That's not necessarily all bad -- in sports as in government, checks and balances have their place. But ever since the realignment movement of the early 2000s, when late NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr. began allowing speedway companies to shuffle race dates within the tracks in their respective portfolios, it seems the sanctioning body has lost a degree of control over the schedule. Yes, NASCAR still awards the race dates, and still does so on one-year contracts. But the tracks receiving those dates seem too often dictated not by NASCAR, but by the speedway companies that own them.

The result is the somewhat messy picture we have now, with a bloated schedule being tinkered with not by NASCAR, but the chairman of a speedway company. The Sprint Cup schedule should be something constructed with the sport's best interests in mind, an entity that directs the series toward the tracks and markets in which it is best served. Instead, we have three different corporate bodies -- NASCAR, SMI, and its Daytona-based rival, International Speedway Corp. -- all jostling for position. We have some races that exist not because they benefit the sport as a whole, but because they benefit one of the speedway companies involved. We have issues that go unaddressed because doing so might hurt a company's bottom line.

NASCAR is a technology-driven, 2000s sport stuck with an antiquated 1980s schedule, the product of too many crew chiefs under the hood. The Sprint Cup slate is in serious need of an overhaul, and it's the job of NASCAR and NASCAR alone to do it. That means no SMI. No ISC. NASCAR needs to place each of the 36 points-paying race dates where it thinks they will benefit the sport the most, regardless of what the speedway companies want. It needs to build its schedule just like every other pro league in America builds its schedule, and that's without outside interference.

Because the status quo is untenable. It's painfully obvious to everyone but the brass at ISC that the second date at Auto Club Speedway in California is not working. It's painfully obvious to everyone but the brass at SMI that Atlanta Motor Speedway has serious attendance issues. If Las Vegas and Kentucky truly deserve Sprint Cup dates, then it's clear where those races should come from. But it won't happen, because it would mean moving a race from one speedway company to another -- an unthinkable proposition under the current structure -- or hurting a racetrack corporation's bottom line. You think the NFL deals with such issues when building its schedule? Of course not.

So with the schedule at its maximum, we're left with the slash-and-burn method of adding race dates, the unfortunate practice of buying a facility and then pillaging it. We're left with two annual race dates in some places that need only one. We're left with some tracks that are seriously outdated or desperately in need of improvement. We're left with some venues that are an embarrassment from a spectator amenity perspective, and a sanctioning body that appears to be appeasing speedway companies instead of demanding that they drag some of their facilities into the modern era. We're left with the motorsports equivalent of political special interest groups having too much influence in what should be solely NASCAR's job.

NASCAR offers a collection of strange bedfellows that all depend on one another to make the sport work. NASCAR needs venues at which to hold races, and racetracks need event dates. At best it's a symbiotic relationship, at worst a combative one. But the ultimate power lies with the sanctioning body, something that's easy to lose sight of when Bruton Smith is buying tracks and threatening to shuffle dates like playing cards, or ISC staunchly refusing to believe there's a problem in Fontana. It's almost like NASCAR needs to nudge them every once in a while and say something like, "boy, that Iowa Speedway sure is an up-and-comer, eh?" just to remind them who's boss.

But of course, this is all pipe-dream stuff. As much as NASCAR needs to lock SMI and ISC out of the room, toss all 36 events onto the floor like pick-up sticks, and rebuild the schedule and the Chase to reflect where the series needs to be in 2009 and beyond, it's not going to happen. So next year we'll get another schedule that satisfies the best interests of two racetrack companies, rather than satisfying the interest of the sport as a whole.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.