Jeff Gluck: Points-swap denial raises more questions
By Jeff Gluck - Associate Editor
Sunday, March 30, 2008
COMMENTARY
Imagine playing a board game with a friend and knowing that if the dice were to accidentally fall on the floor, you could get another roll. The rule isn’t written down anywhere, but it’s understood.
Then – in the middle of the game – the dice tumble to the ground and your friend declares the roll counts against you, and you’re stuck.
This new rule was not something your friend ever mentioned before. It just suddenly popped up and surprised you after the game had already begun. Even worse, your friend let you believe one thing until it suited him to declare something totally different.
That’s what happened to Michael Waltrip Racing this week. All along, race teams were under the impression they could swap owner points among their own cars at any time. They could swap before the season, during the season and after the season. No problem.
NASCAR said and did nothing to refute this notion, never uttering a single word that would indicate it was against the rules. In fact, it appeared to be quite legal, and NASCAR’s silence through weeks of speculation in the garage and media was as good as approval.
But when Waltrip asked that a swap be done between two of its teams leading into Martinsville (in order to allow driver David Reutimann to keep the points he earned as he moved to Dale Jarrett’s vacant ride), NASCAR said no.
Apparently, the rule is now that teams cannot switch points in the middle of the season unless there is a merger.
Who knew?
No one in the garage, that’s for sure. NASCAR did not issue any announcements or hold any press conferences about the rule. It just suddenly presented itself, right in the middle of the game.
Why? Because there was a major outcry over the fact that teams could switch points like Penske Racing did with Kurt Busch and Sam Hornish Jr. and the prospect that teams could do it during the season to get their cars into the top 35 (which in turn guarantees a starting spot for the race).
It was a glaring loophole that made a mockery of competition, and NASCAR knew it. But closing it now was the wrong time.
We’re already six races into the season. Isn’t it a little late to be deciding on rules such as this one?
NASCAR will say no one ever asked to do such a switch before, and so there was no policy on whether it could happen or not.
That’s bogus. Such a switch almost certainly would have been allowed last year, but the gathering storm awaiting such a swap this year – most notably if Petty Enterprises or Roush Fenway Racing had pulled the same move Penske did – might have been enough to discourage NASCAR from allowing it.
Implementing immediate changes if safety concerns or competition issues arise (like the recent mid-season additions of freezing the field under caution and green-white-checkered finishes in recent seasons) is perfectly acceptable. But a rule like this should be addressed during the offseason, with each facet of it made crystal clear to each and every team.
NASCAR should be thankful that Petty and Roush Fenway decided against swapping points within their organizations. Those were both very realistic possibilities (Petty’s Robbie Loomis initially said his team would consider it), and the teams might have announced the whole thing to the media – thinking it was allowed – before NASCAR would have shut it down.
Car owner Jack Roush then would have raised a huge stink about how NASCAR was discriminating against him, and Kyle Petty could have taken to the airwaves to denounce what appeared to be a mid-stream rules change.
It would have made NASCAR look wishy-washy and raised an uproar in the media. Fortunately for officials, NASCAR could afford to deny Waltrip’s request and generate few headlines.
This isn’t the first time NASCAR has changed or created its policies in the middle of the game, and that shouldn’t go unnoticed. No other professional sport’s rules seem as uncertain or flimsy as NASCAR’s, and certainly there is no other major sport that has its rules changed or massaged after the season’s inception.
Imagine if two Major League Baseball teams submitted a trade to the commissioner’s office, only to be told they had already missed the trading deadline because it had been moved up by a month without anyone’s knowledge.
The baseball world would go insane. It would be unprecedented.
But in NASCAR, few eyebrows are raised. Everyone complains, then just shrugs their shoulders and goes on. It’s a way of life, and that’s unacceptable.
Here’s an idea that seems so simple and obvious, yet so foreign in NASCAR: Make the rules, spell them out in black and white and stick to them. Time after time, again and again.
Otherwise, this sport’s fairness will always be called into question.
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