The current iteration of the NASCAR playoffs was all but dead as of May. Dead as a door nail.
That’s according to a new report by Jeff Gluck at The Athletic documenting the debates of a special committee formed by NASCAR in the wake of Joey Logano‘s controversial 2025 NASCAR Cup Series title.
That committee has met twice this year, around the industry flashpoints of the Daytona 500 and Coca-Cola 600.
“Given all of that conversation, it felt like the current one-race format was on life support by the end of the May meeting,” wrote Gluck, who is part of the committee, along with Denny Hamlin and Hall of Famer Mark Martin, among others.
On The Teardown podcast after Bubba Wallace‘s Brickyard 400 win, Gluck said he thought there was an 80 to 90% chance that was the case.
Two months later, however, Gluck feels it’s more like 20%.
What changed?
The $1.1 billion per year elephant in the room did.
Actually, there are three elephants and one elephant-sized peacock.
That peacock, of course, is NBC Sports, the company that, for transparency, I plied my trade for from 2014 to 2020.
On July 8, according to Gluck’s report, the committee was told “executives first wanted to have a private meeting with NBC Sports — one of four Cup Series television partners, and the one that happens to broadcast the playoffs.
“And because NASCAR said it could not meet with NBC until August, any changes for 2026 would now be in jeopardy because the Cup Series schedule had to be finalized — or very close to it — sooner rather than later.”
I have a few questions.
First, does paying a sanctioning body a Scrooge McDuck amount of money for the rights to broadcast its sport suddenly mean you’re in charge of said sport?
Second, why would it take a month for NASCAR and NBC executives to have a private meeting? Zoom calls still exist, right?
And finally, what’s the point of forming a playoff committee if any decision that comes out of it can potentially just be vetoed by a TV network?
That last point seems to be one that got under the skin of Martin, who mentioned on this week’s episode of Frontstretch’s Happy Hour podcast that he thought about resigning from the committee over this.
“After the second meeting, I thought even more about it,” Martin said. “I’m going to resign, because there is no use in me being on this because no one’s interested in what the fans want to do.
“… We got a letter from NBC saying they had re-upped for a long time and we can’t have another scheduled meeting about this points deal until they have a say, because they should have a big say in it. And we can’t have a meeting with them for … a long time.”
Who’s actually in charge at NASCAR? The France family or the Peacock?
TV networks throwing their weight around the room is nothing new. It’s well known FOX Sports basically insisted on Speedway Motorsports making the spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway a dirt event.
CBS wanting an event to preview its first broadcast of the Daytona 500 in 1979 is how we got the original iteration of the Busch Light Clash. Then years later, TV got bored with the Clash being a simple 20-lap dash with the previous season’s pole winners.
In 1998, a qualifying race for the renamed Budweiser Shootout was added and the lap count of the shootout increased to 25 laps. In 2001, when FOX and NBC took a crack at the NASCAR TV package, the Shootout became a 70-lap event. By 2012 it was 75 laps.
By 2020, the last year the race was held at Daytona International Speedway, half the Cup garage was eligible for what had turned into an annoying crash fest rather than the thrilling shootout the race had begun as.
Don’t forget the All-Star Race and all the many rules changes that were put in place for it in the 2010s to ensure that the inclusion of drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Danica Patrick would goose the TV ratings.
Should NBC have some say in the sport it’s covering? Sure.
But the points format of the sport shouldn’t be held hostage by it.
It’s not like a TV network would be crazy enough to actually buy itself an ownership stake in the sanctioning body it covers.
Wait … FOX did what?!
Daniel McFadin is a 10-year veteran of the NASCAR media corp. He wrote for NBC Sports from 2015 to October 2020. He currently works full time for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is lead reporter and an editor for Frontstretch. He is also host of the NASCAR podcast "Dropping the Hammer with Daniel McFadin" presented by Democrat-Gazette.
You can email him at danielmcfadin@gmail.com.