mind when he created the Chase. He was simply trying to put an additional spark in a sport that lost some of the national spotlight when the NFL began play. Over the last three seasons, that has not happened.

ESPN has been between a rock and a hard place and the results have been rough. The network puts the Chasers first, the race leaders second and the fans third. Rather than setting the points before the event and offering normal race coverage, ESPN skews the entire race telecast toward offering live electronic updates of the Chase points at that moment.

The problem is that this is motorsports. Bill Elliott had a commanding lead one year in Homestead only to blow a tire on the final lap. This reality shows justafter he attended to current business, a few of us would go to his cabin and sketch out a fictional baseball game, always in the seventh inning, with the most impossible situations and he would go into a radio broadcasters routine until the game's conclusion(and sometimes into overtime depending on the flight's destination). We sat in facination as this fiction game was played out through this broadcaster(who learned his trade before going to Hollywood on a different career)and at at the conclusion(before which bets were being passed as to which team would emerge victorious) be completely entertained by this passage of time.So it is during the ESPN segment of the Sprint Cup races. I find myself going to the RADIO to "watch" the race as the script generated