For the Chase, imitation is sincerest form of flattery

At the time, it was a radical new idea. From a stage set up at NASCAR's Research and Development Center in January of 2004, series chairman Brian France announced a playoff format that would fundamentally alter the sport. Known at the time as the Chase for the Championship, it was a 10-race, 10-driver system that would distill the slog of a long season down to a two-month sprint.

It was controversial then, it is controversial now. Initially, many drivers hated the idea; some of them still do, but keep those thoughts primarily to themselves. Fans and writers have debated, dissected, and criticized it from the very beginning, since the Chase was rolled out as a method of heightening both drama and television ratings during the fall months when NASCAR squares off directly against football.

So what to make of it now, five years after that series-shaking announcement in Concord, N.C.? No question the Chase has offered some positives, injecting a level of excitement and interest into title runs that would otherwise be runaways, no doubt helping to sell tickets at Homestead and turning the fall race at Richmond into one of the season's premier events. But there have also been shortcomings, most notably the way the system penalizes regular-season leaders, only one of which has gone on to win the title. As for television ratings -- well, let's just call those inconclusive. Some are up, some are down, some are lower than they were in the pre-Chase days of 2003.

Yet to simply dismiss the Chase out of hand is reactionary and short-sighted. It's quite clear that the ticket-buying and television-watching public still has issues with this thing, and that's understandable. Such a dramatic change, such a departure from the way things were done for essentially 50 years can't be fully embraced in just a half a decade. But in the last five years, it's become very obvious that the Chase has earned a level of acceptance -- and, in the process, validation -- from rather unexpected places. The Chase debate may still rage on in NASCAR, but outside the sport the concept is gaining ground.

How do we know this? Because other sanctioning bodies have copied it.

What five years ago seemed an alien, unorthodox method of determining a season champion has become the standard, not just in NASCAR, but now also on the PGA Tour and in the National Hot Rod Association. Executives in other sports liked the Chase idea, liked how it added a playoff element to a league that didn't have a playoff, and -- whether they'll admit it or not -- copied it. One year after NASCAR unveiled its Chase, the PGA Tour rolled out the FedEx Cup, a four-tournament finale to determine a season champion. And last season the NHRA debuted its Countdown to 1, in which the top-10 drivers in most classes advance to a six-race title round.

Neither of these ideas were close to becoming reality before the birth of the Chase, which has had an impact much broader than anyone in NASCAR could ever have expected. Just take a closer look at the FedEx Cup, which wrapped up two weeks ago. The top 144 players (a full tournament field in golf) advance. Points are reset once the championship round begins. The PGA Tour has tweaked the system, narrowing point gaps between qualified players and attempting to protect the importance of the regular season. Any of that sound familiar?

The big difference in the PGA format is that players are eliminated with each event, the first tournament starting with 144 and the last one with only 30. Imagine such a thing in NASCAR, with the lowest-finishing driver in each event eliminated from title contention. The crisis at New Hampshire involving the broken heim joint in Kyle Busch's racecar would have taken on even more urgency.

Of course, such a format would almost be unfair in NASCAR, where drivers' fortunes are so closely bound to the whims of delicate machinery, and where the full season championship has always loomed as the big prize. In comparison, that's where the PGA Tour struggles, and its FedEx Cup labors to gain ground. It's hard to accept Vijay Singh as season champion when Padraig Harrington -- eliminated after missed cuts in the first two events -- won a pair of major championships. Then again, fans of Jeff Gordon may argue the same thing after watching their driver dominate last year's regular season only to fall short in the Chase.

But the point here is that there's obviously something about the Chase that works, to the extent that other sports leagues want to try it on for themselves. It's also obvious that this is a relatively new phenomenon, and that men like France, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem and NHRA president Tom Compton are all searching for the right ways of refining it. The NHRA, for example, has already tweaked the rules of its two-year-old playoff, in which the remaining 10 drivers have their points readjusted before entering their final six events. NASCAR may have started the ball rolling, but it's far from alone in its quest to get it right.

Sports leagues may seem all about diversion and entertainment, but at heart every one is a business. They exist to generate revenue, and practices that work spread like a grass fire. If one short-track owner or minor-league ball club hits upon a promotion that gets more people through the gates, others will surely copy it. If one big-league team finds a new way of squeezing a little more revenue out of its arena, others will absolutely follow suit. Five years in, it's still too soon to tell what the ultimate legacy of the Chase era in NASCAR will be. But imitation, as everyone knows, is the sincerest form of flattery.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer