Nationwide Nostalgia: My, how things have changed

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but the race seemed … better, somehow. More interesting than usual, more fun. It wasn’t until the closing laps that I realized why I was enjoying it so much. (OK I admit, Kyle Busch spinning out helped.) The running order was scrolling along the screen when I had the epiphany.

This was almost a real Nationwide Series race.

Only two of the top-10 finishers — David Ragan and Clint Bowyer — were Cup regulars, and neither had any real effect on the outcome of the race. After Busch’s early exit, the race was between prodigy Joey Logano (OK, so he drives Cup team equipment, but it was better than the alternative), and the fastest car in the field most of the night, the machine of Mike Wallace, who had to settle for third after some horrible late-race pit work. Scott Wimmer finished second; Brad Keselowski fourth; and Bryan Clauson, another rookie, came in fifth. 

It didn’t look like a Cup leaderboard. And it was fun again.

The Nationwide Series used to be my favorite of NASCAR’s touring circuits. Up until maybe six or seven years ago, it was what it should have been: a steppingstone to the Cup Series for some and a career series for those who couldn’t quite make the Cup cut. Sure, a handful of Cup guys ran every week, but it wasn’t always the same guys and they just ran a few races, usually at their favorite tracks. They didn’t take sponsors away from the teams that raced full time. They coexisted — the Cup guys raced the younger guys hard, taught them respect and how to race better. They didn’t act like they were entitled to positions just because they were Cup guys, they raced for fun. And it was fun. Tickets were readily available and inexpensive and the racing was great.

The last time a true Nationwide (then Busch) Series team neither owned nor driven by a Cup organization won the championship was in 2000. Jeff Green, driving for then-powerhouse ppc Racing, won the title by a then-record 616 points over his teammate, Jason Keller. The top 10 in points that year included just two Cup-owned teams — the Richard Childress Racing team for Kevin Harvick (third) and the DEI-owned Ron Hornaday entry (fifth). The other teams in the top 10 read like some kind of graveyard list of past success:  Fourth-place Cicci-Welliver (fielding cars for Todd Bodine and ninth-place David Green), Akins Motorsports (Elton Sawyer, sixth), Phoenix Racing (Randy LaJoie, seventh — the only one of these teams still in existence), Brewco Racing (Casey Atwood, eight), and Herzog Racing (Jimmie Johnson, 10th).

Fast forward just seven seasons and the landscape is barely recognizable. Only two of the top 10 teams in 2007 had no Cup affiliation (driver, owner, partnership or a combination). It’s recognizable as the same series by name only — and even that’s changed. And it’s just not as much fun. There’s just not much feeling of competition when a top Cup team and driver run away with the championship as has happened the last two years. It’s almost a sham — and does it make them feel good to beat a team with less money and/or a less experienced driver by a ridiculous margin? Honestly, I’d be embarrassed to hold a trophy won that way.

We’ve all heard NASCAR’s tired line about the Cup guys putting butts in the seats, and maybe that’s true, but there were butts in the seats in 2000, rooting for teams with a true identity, not those simply trying to hang on against the Cup juggernaut. It was like minor league baseball — a glimpse at the past and into the future as well as an exercise in the present. Anyone could win, any time, and there was more parity than in the Cup Series because nobody really had that much.

The Cup teams changed all that, luring high-dollar sponsors with the promise of a Cup star behind the wheel. At first it was a few races a year, and even then, were not a threat to the real teams in the series. But then the Cup owners got greedy. Why not go for two championships this year? It was then the smaller teams were pushed out, one by one, until the few that remain compete for only a top 10 spot at the end of the year. There are no real championship illusions. Keselowski has a real shot at winning it all, but even he is, in reality, driving Hendrick Motorsports equipment. The rest will settle for the crumbs they can get. 

What the Nationwide Series has become is almost grotesque compared to what it was when this decade began. It’s the big kids taking over the game and bragging that they beat the little kids with no neighborhood moms to stop the bullying. It’s Main Street USA, slowly dying as the big stores spring up on the outskirts of town. It’s a slow, painful death to those that once made it their livelihood, only to be forced to the sidelines and then off the field altogether.

I miss it. Am I the only one?