Jimmie Johnson must be stopped.

The nerve of the guy. Three consecutive championships on NASCAR's highest level, in an era when the sanctioning body has taken all kinds of actions -- like a new car and a revamped playoff format -- to try and foster more level competition? Unthinkable. And yet here he is, one 36th-place finish (or better) at Homestead-Miami Speedway away from tying the record for consecutive titles set three decades ago by Cale Yarborough. It just isn't supposed to happen in this day and age. Run that winning No. 48 car from Phoenix through the inspection bay one more time. Surely chew chief Chad Knaus is up to some kind of witchery again.

Oh, well. It's inevitable now. At this point, it seems, only complete catastrophe -- like the engine failure Johnson suffered in the Coca-Cola 600 that doomed him to a 39th-place finish, his only result worse than 36th all season -- will prevent Johnson from receiving yet another big trophy and another big check. And then, it's Jimmie photographed in Times Square. Jimmie on Letterman. Jimmie ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Jimmie applauded at the Waldorf-Astoria. Really, everyone could stay home, NASCAR could patch together some old video footage, and no one would know the difference.

But either way, he'll arrive in Daytona in February with another championship year stitched to the breast of his firesuit, and gunning for something no driver in any of NASCAR's major series has ever done -- four titles in a row. Four in a row! Do you realize how rare that is? It's never happened in football. It hasn't happened in baseball since the Yankees won five consecutive in the 1950s. It hasn't happened in basketball since the Celtics dominated things in the 1960s. Sure, Sebastien Bourdais won four consecutive championships on the defunct Champ Car circuit, but that was a fading series weakened by defections to the Indy Racing League. Throw that out, and there are only two major open-wheel drivers to ever have won four or more titles consecutively: Formula One legends Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio.

So Johnson, already in quite elite company, is on the brink of ascending into some very rarefied air. Given how he's dominated the series for the past three years, there's no reason to believe he won't get there. The rest of the field hasn't been able to stop him. The competitive restraints placed on the entire garage by NASCAR haven't been able to stop him. Big, bad Toyota, which seemed on the verge of world domination a few years ago (if some fans of domestic carmakers are to be believed), hasn't been able to stop him. The economic downturn which has crippled so many teams hasn't been able to stop him. The hit-or-miss nature of Goodyear tires hasn't been able to stop him. No matter the situation, no matter the track, he just wins.

Desperate times, then, call for desperate measures. Stopping Johnson will require tactics that, on the surface, may not seem fair. But then again, neither is the way he's beating up on everybody. Horse racing jockeys who are on the smaller side are often handicapped by having to wear weighted vests. Maybe NASCAR should try something similar. Every time Johnson wins, for instance, strip a piece of tape along his helmet visor. After four or five victories, good luck navigating Turn 2 at Darlington, pal! Maybe once the Chase begins, the points leader should be forced to drive his manufacturer's smallest car model. Yeah, let's see Johnson try to take the pole at Homestead in a four-cylinder Chevy Aveo. How about this -- before each short-track race, Johnson gets to choose one pedal: gas or brake. What, you want both? Greedy.

Of course, any of those limitations could enhance the chance of Johnson crashing into Dale Earnhardt Jr., so they probably won't work. How about the idea of a mulligan? Car owner Jack Roush likes it. In golf, when you hit a shot you don't like, you take a mulligan. Of course, the pros don't do it, but you get the point. Don't like a Chase race result? Throw it out! Sure, the boys in IndyCars and Formula One, where every race counts, would probably laugh. But we're trying to stop a juggernaut here. What, one mulligan wouldn't knock Johnson out of the lead? Try two. That still isn't enough? How about this -- everybody in the Chase gets nine mulligans, or as many as it takes to beat Johnson.

What about the knockout format that's been espoused, whereby the lowest Chase drivers in points after so many races are eliminated from contention? You mean to tell me that Johnson, as the points leader after seven of the nine playoff events contested thus far, would still be on top? Unbelievable. This is tougher than trying to kill the monster from Cloverfield. Let's ask Brian France, the chairman of NASCAR. Surely he's tired of this Era of Jimmie by now. Certainly he wants to see more drama at Homestead. Maybe he has an idea.

"We have a system that, if everybody performs well, we have more people that have a shot at the championship down the stretch. That's undeniable," France said. "You have to make the Chase in the first place. We're in our fifth year, and as history will unfold, we'll have a period of years where someone will be as dominant as Jimmie and it will go down in the history books. Then there will be other years where that won't happen, and we'll have a number of years of historically tight championship battles. That will be terrific, too. So all we want is the right playoff format, and then if somebody's dominant, they're dominant. If they're not, well, that will be terrific."

Well, that certainly doesn't help. That leaves us with one tactic -- a weapon of last resort, if you will. Fans may be shocked. It's a radical idea that will surely stir controversy. It will require the cooperation of every other team in the Sprint Cup garage area. But if you want to take down Jimmie Johnson, if you want to be absolutely certain that he doesn't win a fourth consecutive championship, then there is only one final, drastic step to take.

Everybody else is just going to have to get better.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer