LEARY: NASCAR Cup Champions 1948-2007

Steve Keller - 26 February 2008 09:30 PM

LEARY: NASCAR Cup Champions 1948-2007

After listening to all the NASCAR pundits babble on about “SPRINT Cup” winnings, it’s so nice to see someone doesn’t go along with the NASCAR version of rewriting history whenever the decal on the door changes....just call them Champions, Cup winners.....NASCAR Champions

If they win in the year of your present sponsor, use the name, but how can you take away the paid for championships of the past by accepting today’s dollars?

Personally, as an “old-school” fan, I detest naming rights to stadiums, tracks, etc. and mainly for this very reason. If someone 20 years down the road is reading racing history, and finds that Joe Flabeetz won 4 races at Lowes, how are they supposed to know its the same track as Charlotte? If it were up to me, and its not, I would have been calling it the Grand National Championship the whole time, and then you can say Grand National Championship presented by Winston, or GN Championship brought to you by Nextel. Then at least you have some symmetry. Same with races-- The Pepsi 400 should really be called the Pepsi Firecracker 400, so uninformed people could make the connection that this was the same race that has always run around July 4th.

Probably the easiest way to get around calling a guy who won NASCAR’s top series in 1949 would be to simply refer to him as the “NASCAR Champion” and the 2nd echelon series winner could be called “NASCAR Sportsman Champion.  It’s stupid and sounds even stupider when some announcer yammers on about how some guy in the ‘40s or’50s won some cell phone Cup Championship when cell phones didn’t even exist.  Even though NASCAR seems to think fans are idiot sheep and must have every detail explained, I believe in the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) method and people will just get it.

100% agree with bebilly yallynn