I haven’t addressed your concern about the last oval race of the year not being included in the oval championship until now because I understand what they’re trying to do: settle the two lesser championships first and then crown the big guy (or gal) at the finale. You have a problem with that. I don’t. You and your list of 1,000 people who argree with you think the whole thing is a joke. I and the four people who agree with me don’t. That is where we part ways on this.

Besides it took much more than 30 seconds to READ your last post. I read it I re-read it & do not get your NBA analogy (as explained in my response).

You get all angry with me but you never address the major flaw in the “oval championship”. Your NFL & NBA analogies didn’t make sense to me (as the conference championships are a KEY piece of the OVERALL chamionship. The ICS deal are fragmented & kept SEPARATE by the series by design.

I’m done with you, on this topic and any other.

What is this “Split NBA Championship” you keep mentioning The East Champ meets the West’s Champ. Those games are a key part of the NBA championship… the ICS oval & RC concept are NOT Last years NBA Champion was the L.A. Lakers. No one but fans from Orlando cares that the Magic wee the Eastern Conference champions…. remember that old No Fear t-shirt 2ND PLACE is the 1ST LOSER

BTW Speed, add the RLM/ Midweek Motorsport team (4) to my camp too :idea & Dex writes for Jeff’s blog

If it was just “adding up 3 columns of data” fine… but the oval deal isn’t… it asks you to crown an oval champ EXCEPT don’t use the last OVAL as we don’t want to goof with the REAL champion’s day. NFL,MLB, NBA & NHL do not make you fuss with subtraction… its all about winning & crowning ONE champion.

Cheers mate… we obviously agree to DISAGREE on this

I wanted to update on my “experiment” from last night. The following is almost verbatim.

Me [to wife]: OK, honey, you know how IndyCars race on both ovals and road courses?
Her: Yes.
Me: Well, they’ve decided to give out trophies to the person who scores the most points on each.
Her: OK.
Me: So, if you score points on an oval, that goes in your “oval” column as well as in the “overall” column. The converse is true for the road courses.
Her: OK.
Me: The overall points score for each driver will be the same as the oval number and the road number added together.
Her: OK.
Me: Did you get all of that? Does any of it need further explanation?
Her: Yeah, I got it. Wait, am I supposedly a “dumb” person in some sort of experiment you’re doing?
Me: Uh…no?

There you have it. Even a non-sports fan can understand this in under a minute.

I know that this is a blog and we’re presenting opinions, which we are both allowed to have, and we are allowed to disagree. But, the thing that has made this a particularly aggravating debate for me is that critics (you included) have skipped back and forth between the “means nothing” and “too complicated” arguments, and use them almost interchangably. My point with all that NBA talk is that the split championships are not hard to understand, that it’s far less difficult to understand than people are making it out to be. I will concede that the “means nothing” argument is up for debate, and that’s in the eye of the beholder. You’re on one side of the fence with your buddies and apparently every single person on the IndyCar.com forums, while me, the couple of friends that I’ve talked to, plus George, plus Jeff Iannucci, plus maybe one or two other people are on the other. That’s fine. At the same time, though, I’ve made the point repeatedly here and elsewhere that this isn’t really something to bring in new fans. That heavy lifting is yet to be done, and I think (and hope) there’s more to come on that topic. Meanwhile, this was something that Randy could announce right now, at limited cost (even if they don’t sign on new sponsors, which is not guaranteed, just an idea I had, and you’ll have to forgive me for trying to be optimistic about something) and give folks something to talk about.

The other debate, though, the one about it being ridiculously complicated, is the one I take offense to. It’s an insult to sports fans everywhere that they can follow other sports to the minute detail and wouldn’t be able to understand the road/oval champions. That isn’t saying anything about the validity of the road/oval champions, just that people aren’t so simple that they can’t understand three columns of data.

How long did it take Indycar to secure a solid title sponsor & you guys think there will be two more just rushing in to sponsor the RC & Oval titles?

My bigger point was the “Oval Champion” does NOT include Homestead so it is an even more hollow “championship” Sorry but IMO, that would be like naming a NBA post season MVP but DROPPING games from the Finals The NFL’s AFC & NFC champion BOTH play 16 reg. season games. Indycar’s “oval” champion won’t get to count ONE oval for his championship. Its flawed even before the end. How much you want to bet the overall ICS champion will also pick up a RC or oval trophy too?

Again you brought up the NBA to defend this half-a$$ ICS mini championship… The NBA is similar to my previous cycling example. The NBA has what 30 teams & thousands of players. Stat geeks have a lot to play with.

As for me criticizing you… dude, its a BLOG & we are all sharing our OPINIONS We don’t have to agree (& we obviously don’t on this) Over at the Indycar.com Forums these mini championships have basically been panned. So its not just me. I also polled a few of my friends who really don’t follow Indycar. Had them read an article explaining these minis & they thought it was a circle jerk. They both said Indycar should just focus on RACING & ONE championship. So many diehards (@ Indycar.com) are shaking their heads & its doing zero for the casual fan. Randy’s changes (like a new chassis) should be BIG & BOLD. This mini championships is a big WTFC’s… Kind of like the old CART Nation’s Cup. No one gave a crap about that either.

Giving “best in class” awards can work with a field of competitors as small as two. As a guy who autocrosses in a very unpopular class, I’ve come to find that out on a first person basis. Anyway, I don’t think it’s necessary to have a field of 200 people to give out a “best in class” award. You may see it as a hollow award to give out a “best in class” award in a field as small as 24, when everybody is using the same equipment, but some of us don’t. Don’t like it? Don’t pay attention to it.

I don’t think you’re giving anybody nearly enough credit to be able to hold three points systems in their head at the same time. Those same “ESPN guys” talk about scoring titles, rebound titles, assist titles, conference and division titles, plus the NBA Finals champs. Is that more or less complicated than IndyCar having three points standings (one of which is literally the other two added together)? I say “more complicated”, but I’ve never heard one person complain once about the NBA being too complicated. At the same time, many of those same fans can track many stats in multiple other sports as well. Again, an IndyCar driver with three points numbers by his name in the standings pales in comparison to what people are exposed to on ESPN.com on a daily basis. Click on a player page for any sport and you’ll see what I mean.

Your comparison to ALMS isn’t really an apples to apples comparison, either. We aren’t going to have separate classes on the track at once (which, even as a big fan of the ALMS, I will admit is confusing, sometimes even for die hards), it’s the results of this week’s race counts toward one one minor championship and the overall, but not the other minor championship. Am I missing something about how that’s hard to grasp? Because I think any fan, existing or new, will be able to get it with about 45 seconds of explanation. Hey, maybe I’ll try this on my wife tomorrow as an experiment.

As for Izod…you think Randy didn’t run this past them first? Or that he’d have to run it by them if somebody wanted to sponsor one of the road/oval trophies? If Izod wasn’t into this, I’m convinced that it’d never have seen the light of day.

Dude, we got it. You don’t like the “three championships” (which I say is like having two division champs and one Super Bowl champ). Tell you what: maybe you shouldn’t pay any attention to them then. Meanwhile, some of us are going to enjoy them for what they are: not a be-all-end-all for what ails our sport, but something interesting to talk about.

Speed: If I’m ANY Indycar owner WHY would I give a good crap about 100K when my sponsorship overhead is 8-10 MILLION a car

Guys, we are all fans of Indycar (or we wouldn’t be here, eh) but lets be freakin REAL about our hopes & dreams for the series. (1) If I was IZOD I would be seriously PI$$ED if these two mini championships got branded… it takes away from my PR. I’ve branded this series the IZOD Indycar Series… Autozone (or who ever) muddies up my message
(2) I’ve heard sports marketing types tell the ALMS that their multiple class racing is CONFUSING to the regular sports fan. They are not even mentioned on SportsCenter, so imagine the ESPN guys trying to explain 3 ICS champions to their stick & ball crowd.

My favorite part will be when they have to tell that same crowd that the “Oval” champion doesn’t include the OVAL where hopefully the REAL IICS championship is being crowned (Miami-Homestead). What if the oval championship is a three way TIE entering the last oval race? Oh happy joy-joy… FIVE 2011 “championship” trophies @ the year-end banquet (2011 champ, 1 RC champ, & 3 oval champs )