In sport's Chase era, old standards no longer apply

He lasted until the next-to-last week of the season. Although he still had a slight mathematical chance of winning what would be his fifth championship in NASCAR's premier division, Jeff Gordon didn't build his illustrious career by clinging to false hope. So he climbed out of his vehicle at Phoenix International Raceway last November and uttered the two words that effectively ended the 2007 edition of the Chase: "It's over."

Kyle Busch made it only to Dover, eight long weeks before the finish line, but the scenario was still strikingly similar: a driver who dominated the regular season, racking up victory after victory after victory, only to see it all unravel once this vehicular version of the playoffs began. "We're done," Busch said Sunday, echoing words spoken by his former teammate a year ago. While the comparison isn't perfect -- Gordon's season was statistically more impressive, Busch's fall considerably more precipitous -- it's beginning to look like another case of another driver doing everything right over the first 26 races, and having nothing to show for it in the end.

More than anything else, this is what bothers people about the Chase. Sure, it gives a second chance to underdogs who might have been too far behind to mount any kind of charge under the traditional system, and it certainly does provide for more compelling storylines over the final third of the season. But like a late caution that leaves the leader waffling over whether or not to pit, it turns the guy out front into a sitting duck. Nothing against Jimmie Johnson, who used the system to his advantage last year, and took the Chase by the throat. But it essentially forces the best driver over the regular season to win the championship a second time, and it renders insignificant even a campaign like the one Gordon enjoyed last year, those 30 top-10s now all but forgotten.

And now we have a situation where Busch, clearly the top driver this season, a man who a month ago appeared to have a shot (and still might) at the modern-era record of 13 wins shared by Gordon and Richard Petty, has been relegated to the status of also-ran because of a broken suspension piece and a blown engine in successive weeks. Granted, even under the old system, he'd still be behind -- 33 points back of Carl Edwards, according to calculations. But he wouldn't be buried, 210 off the pace and out of it. Funny how that post-Richmond points reset seems to help everyone but the driver who's proven himself most worthy of the championship.

There are still people who grumble that the system cheated Gordon out of what should have been another championship. Barring one of the most stupendous comebacks in NASCAR history, fans of Kyle Busch will certainly feel the same way. Right now, all the No. 18 team can do is go for race wins, see how things shake out over the final eight races, and then get ready for next year. But of course, there's no guarantee that Busch will be able to unleash a similar campaign in 2009. Just look at Gordon, who has followed one of his best seasons with one of his most trying.

"I think it's going to be a great lesson, a great test for those guys, to show us all what they're capable of doing," said Gordon, who knows firsthand the level of disappointment Busch is feeling this week. "You know, I still think there's no doubt in anybody's mind what kind of talent Kyle Busch is and will continue to be in our sport. And I know that it's probably been very frustrating for him, because two weeks in a row it's been something out of his hands. So all he can do is come back and do everything that he possibly can to get that team back into Victory Lane. He's going to be on full tilt, I know that for sure, which Kyle typically is. But he certainly will be trying to make up all the points that have been lost."

The Chase is five years old now, but so much about it still feels alien. The thought that a driver can come almost out of nowhere to win a Sprint Cup title, as Greg Biffle is attempting to do this season, would have been laughable under the old format. Many drivers, rooted in the belief that a NASCAR champion is identified over the grueling slog of a 10-month season, still seem to wrestle with the concept that they now have to be great only over 10 races, and not 36. For decades, fans held fast to the traditional credo that consistency is everything, honing an ability to see past the glitz of Victory Lane and to the bigger picture beyond.

All that has changed now. As much as we want to believe that some of the old standards still apply, everything is different. When one driver dominates the season but fails to win a championship, it can be dismissed as an aberration. But now that it's happening two years in a row, it's clear that this isn't a fluke, but the new reality. Just as a wild card entry can upend a 100-game winner in baseball, a dark horse can now wrest a championship from the season's most successful driver in Sprint Cup. In both cases, you wind up with fans arguing over who the real champion should be. The difference is, in pre-Chase NASCAR, that was rarely if ever up for debate.

So now Busch is all but out of the running, and one obstacle has been removed from Johnson's path to a potential third consecutive championship. It would be a spectacular accomplishment, given that only one other man has ever done it. But since Cale Yarborough's three titles (won from 1976-78) came under the old points system that demanded sustained excellence over an entire season, can the two feats even be compared? That's something even Gordon, Johnson's car owner and teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, wonders about.

"The one thing that I hesitate to really go into too much detail about is the history of our sport and comparing what's happened since the Sprint Cup has come along versus with the ... old points system," Gordon said. "There is no comparison. I think you can't really compare history. Even though there's been one three-time champion, that's Cale Yarborough, how he did it and where that put him in history versus Jimmie, this is new history. It's equally as challenging and substantial, but I don't think you can compare the two."

It's just another way the Chase has changed things, for better or worse. That doesn't mean the playoff system is necessarily bad for the sport. But things are different now. Don't believe it? Ask Jeff Gordon or Kyle Busch.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.