The short story is this: The NASCAR season is too long.
It's a 36-race grind, stretching from mid-February to mid-November. Seasons come and go as the 40 drivers on the Monster Energy Cup circuit go round and round.
Baseball, basketball and the NFL _ the biggest competitive beast of them all _ fight for attention as the months go by. Spoiler alert: NASCAR is not winning.
TV ratings have continued to be sluggish and are plunging from week to week and season to season. A recent example:
The All-Star Race on May 20 had a 1.6 final rating and 2.9 million viewers on Fox Sports 1, down 20 percent in ratings and 13 percent in viewership.
So maybe the answer lies in the less-is-more school of thought.
"Our season is way too long," said Darrell Waltrip, a NASCAR Hall of Famer and now an analyst on Fox Sports. "Look, 36 Super Bowls is what we're trying to do here. And that's way too much."
NASCAR's business model has been a work in progress over the last decade, from revamping the Chase (now playoffs) format several times to recently making scheduling changes involving venues. Charlotte Motor Speedway's playoff race, for example, now will be staged on the venue's road course instead of its 1.5-mile oval.
But the season itself remains a grind for everyone. Condensing the season would make it easier for fans to pick out their "must-see" races, helping to fill the grandstands. And it would sure be a blessing to the drivers, whose offseason consists of Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.
"If that," driver Martin Truex Jr. said. "I definitely would be for it. It would be good for our sport, especially during football season."
Ah, football. King of the World, and flat-screen TVs in your living room. And while the NFL saw a dip of 8 percent in television ratings during the 2016 regular season in comparison to 2015, games still drew an average of 16.5 million viewers. By comparison, the final playoff race in Homestead last year drew 6.1 million viewers.
"We kid ourselves to think we can compete with the NFL," Waltrip said. "Nobody can compete with the NFL. So your TV ratings are going to go down. What we do now is try to find some wiggle room on a Saturday night or Sunday where you can race in-between a football game.
"I'd start earlier and end earlier. Try to have a schedule start maybe early February and end maybe by Labor Day."
Amen, brother.
