Jimmie Johnson appears to be well on his way to his record tying third consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup title.  With a 149 point lead over 2nd place Greg Biffle and only four races to go, its going to take a major mistake on Johnson's part to make this Chase interesting.  Johnson's dominance of the 10 race Chase is now leading some to suggest that the Chase needs to be "Jimmie-proofed", much like Augusta National has tried (and failed) to do with Tiger Woods.

The idea is to select certain tracks that Jimmie Johnson struggles at, and put them in the Chase in order to make it more exciting.  The belief is that the ten tracks that are in the Chase favor Johnson.  There might be some reason to believe this as Johnson has an average finish of 10.03 at those tracks and has won 13 out of 46 Chase races overall.  However, this idea has a pretty large hole in it.  Who says that Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus aren't just holding back until the Chase?  Most of the 10 Chase tracks are raced at earlier in the year, and yet he isn't as dominant at those tracks before the Chase.  To me, this would show that Johnson and crew are holding something back until the Chase when they need it.  If that's true, what makes NASCAR think that Johnson wouldn't just dominate a new slate of Chase racetracks?

The real problem for NASCAR right now is that they are selling out to marketing. The Chase idea was implemented to create more exciting championship races down the stretch.  As a fan, I wasn't comfortable with 10 races deciding the championship in a 36 race season.  It just didn't make good racing sense.  However, fans ended up giving in as the first Chase led to the closest championship finish in the NASCAR history.  The problem with this is that the best guy doesn't necessarily win the title.  In fact, in two of the four Chases so far that hasn't happened.  Jeff Gordon was without a doubt the best driver in both 2004 and 2007 but Kurt Busch and Jimmie Johnson took those respective titles. 

"Jimmie-proofing" the Chase would just be a continuation of the selling out.  Picking and choosing racetracks in order to manipulate a close championship race takes the competition and sport right out of NASCAR.  If NASCAR actually goes through with this, they could essentially pick who would win a title from year to year by picking that driver's 10 best racetracks and putting them in the Chase.  Its a bad road to go down and a road that will ruin the trust between the sport and its fans.

NASCAR already made a race-changing marketing decision earlier this year when they chose Tony Stewart as the winner of the Talladega race even though he crossed the finish line second.  If NASCAR knows what's best for their sport, they won't choose to again manipulate results and won't choose to "Jimmie-proof" the Chase.