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What's the point? Scoring system doesn't reward aggressiveness, winningPosted: Monday July 07, 2003 6:01 PM
Guess what time it is? Time for my patented I Hate the Winston Cup Points System™ rant. The reason? Heading into Daytona, Matt Kenseth held a 174-point advantage over the second-place driver, Jeff Gordon --and that represented the largest lead after 16 races since 1987. So that should mean that Kenseth has had the most dominating first half of a season in 16 years. If he’s so clearly dominant, it should be easy to pick his numbers out of the crowd. Try it:
So which set of results belongs to Kenseth? If you answered C, you’re right and you can skip the rest of the I Hate the Winston Cup Points System™ rant. If not, don’t feel bad. There’s no reason to look at those numbers and say, “Hey, right there are the numbers of a cat who’s having the best, most dominant first half of a season since 1987.” (By the way, A belongs to Kurt Busch , who is seventh, B is Bobby Labonte , who is fourth, and D is Ryan Newman , who is 16th.) How has Kenseth amassed such a big lead? By avoiding trouble. The Winston Cup championship routinely goes to guys who don’t screw up, as opposed to guys who make things happen. (Because you can’t make things happen—but we’ll get to that in a minute.) It seems silly for a championship to be decided on who has the best record after you throw out everyone’s 20 best results, but that’s essentially what’s being done. And because everyone gets points every week, it’s impossible to make a big move in the standings. In F1, a win is worth 10 points and second place is worth eight. That means a win is worth 25% more than a runner-up finish. In NASCAR, though, a win gets you 175 and a second gets you 170, meaning a win is worth 2.9% more than a second-place. With virtually no statistical premium on a win, even a five-race winning streak isn’t going to allow a driver to make a big move—unless the guy he’s chasing screws up. There are other problems with the system. By giving every driver points, NASCAR is creating a huge disincentive for a driver to keep himself out of a race if he’s hurt. But if only 25 or so drivers got points each week (and really, is there a difference between a 32nd place finish and a 41st place finish?), then a hurt driver would be take less of a hit in the points by sitting out. And perhaps the worst thing about the system is that it never yields exciting races. Since 1994, only once has the margin separating the top two drivers heading into the last race of the season been less than 75 points. I mean no disrespect to Kenseth, and I realize that consistency needs to be rewarded. But clearly NASCAR can do better than a system that tells us we are witnessing a dominant performance in the most competitive, balanced eras the sport has seen. What should they do? I’ll tell you next week, in my patented What I’d Do if I Ran NASCAR (Besides Banning Bad Moustaches)™ rant.
Terry Labonte . Say this with me: “Terry Labonte is in 13th place.” Gotta hear it to believe it. He’s got no wins, two top fives and five top tens, but he’s in 13th place. (Further proof the points system is all messed up.) Good for him, I say.
Ricky Craven . My boy did some serious backtracking early Saturday, then got caught up in the Mini One. Now he’s 17th in the standings. I fear my dreams of a Craven championship are shot.
My assertion that Bernie Kosar was the greatest athlete ever was met with a fair amount of scorn, and one of you who shall remain nameless—let’s call him Steve from Birmingham —also took me to task for asserting Joy Division was better than Pink Floyd . Our pal Ricardo from Rio wrote in to inform me that Brazil does, in fact have a stock car series. (It’s all road courses and is quite popular.) Thanks for straightening me out. I’d love to check it out because it sounds cool and, well, it’s in Brazil. And this came from Ron in Columbus : “Mark, I have to disagree with your comment about Bernie Kosar. Being from Columbus I grew up listening to how great Art Schlichter was (even with his wobbly passes) but after seeing Pele play in person my mind was forever changed. I'm not sure how you can think that Bernie was great when he had trouble wobbling out of the pocket. I don't know why, but he always reminded me of Grimace from McDonalds. Please reconsider your comment. Anyway, now for my NASCAR question: Am I the only one not looking forward to NBC's team of race commentators? I don't know about you, but I really enjoy Fox’s team while NBC's team bores me to tears. Any chance that since the two networks are splitting the coverage they could share the same commentating team (preferably Fox’s)?” Ron, thanks for your letter. But how can you jump from Art Schlichter to Pele ? That’s like saying “Everyone I know loves Matchbox 20 , but then I listened to Abbey Road and I decided the Beatles were better.” As for your Grimace crack, Grimace did not have the pocket poise that Kosar does. I still maintain that in the ’86 AFC Championship Game he purposely underthrew the touchdown to Brian Brennan (which should have been the game winner) because he saw that Dennis Smith wasn’t watching the ball. And as much as his throwing motion was mocked, it was a fairly moot point. He was so tall it didn’t hurt him to sling it sidearm. So I say, No, my friend, Grimace was definitely not in the same league as Bernie. (Which McDonaldland character do you guys think would be the best athlete? Please, I beg you, send me your thoughts on it.) As for your TV query, I, too love the FOX guys. They’ve become part of the sport, part of race weekend. That kind of cachet can’t be replicated, nor should anyone try to replicate it. Nothing is worse than watching a bad ripoff of something good. Having said that, I think NBC definitely goes about things in a different way and has a different personality, for lack of a better word, out of necessity. For what they do, I really don’t mind them. They cover things in a slightly more traditional way, but they do it fairly well. They’re playing to their strengths, which is the smart thing to do. Are they as good as FOX? No way. But then again, nobody calls a baseball game like Vin Scully , but that’s not to say that there aren’t some good guys out there. And there’s no way FOX would let NBC use its guys. They’re too valuable to FOX because what they do is unique.
We hit the cookie cutter track in Chicago. Not much past history to go on, other than the fact that Kevin Harvick has won every race at the track. Makes him the smart bet, right? Well, it got me thinking about track domination. And unless I’m reading the media guide wrong—always a good chance of that—the only drivers who entered the season with a chance to win the same race three years in a row were Harvick, Jeff Gordon in Kansas, Junior in the Talladega fall race and Tony Stewart in the Richmond spring race. The only one to try for the trifecta so far was Stewart, who finished sixth. There’s an old axiom in football that it’s hard to beat someone three times in a year. Applying that logic to racing, I’m going against Harvick. Put your money on Jeff Gordon .
Mark Bechtel covers NASCAR for Sports Illustrated and SI.com.
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