Handicapping the races.

Sportswriter Dave George thinks up some ways of finishing out the stock-car season on a more competitive note:

What's the glory of playing host to the final laps of the NASCAR season if all the real racing's already been done? That's the continuing problem with the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

For all the technical wizardry that goes into preparing and racing and inspecting these machines, the guys in the air-conditioned offices still haven't come up with a foolproof "playoff" system that guarantees enough drama to last through November.
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Maybe there are a few more traditional sports models worth studying to bring the suspense back to the speedway.

Try a mutation of the all-inclusive March Madness concept. Every driver in the 43-field starts the 10-race Chase with a chance to win it all. Each week you eliminate the worst finishers until finally, at Homestead, there are two drivers still eligible to be the champion. Whichever crosses the finish line ahead of the other that day is the man.

Or you could strive for parity, like the NFL Draft. The points leader starts at the back of the pack every week of the Chase, with the second-place driver just ahead of him and so forth. The last lap might wind up about the same, but the first 50 would be a hurricane.

Baseball's quirky system of determining a champion has some entertainment potential. Start the last few Chase races at 8:30 p.m. and schedule them for cold-weather tracks, say New Hampshire and Chicagoland. Make closing out each race more difficult by mandating that every crew member who takes part in a pit stop is ineligible to be used again. Finally, around 1 a.m., take the five or six drivers who are still awake and unleash them on a one-lap, winner-take-all sprint to the finish.

Love that last one.

Jimmie Johnson needs to take one for the team Sunday at Phoenix by running out of gas or something in order to cough up another chunk of his points lead. It's the last available opportunity to make a sensation of this thing.