The sports world is supposed to be an arena that gives us a break from the world and its crappy realities. And while there are any number of diversionary NASCAR stories to occupy our imaginations – Jimmie Johnson's epic three-season run comes to mind – the unfortunate truth is that none of those is enough to overcome the real world.   Within the last 24 hours, it was announced that the Wood Brothers have lost the Air Force as a sponsor on the No. 21, just the l ...

For more than a decade, fans and insiders alike have bitched about NASCAR and its direction. The sport has lost touch with its roots. The season is too long. It’s too expensive. The drivers are boring. The racing is dull. Intermediate tracks suck.   And if the substance of the complaints hasn’t changed all that much over the years, neither has NASCAR’s response to any and all of it: It has done nothing. Well, that’s not entirely fair: the powers that be have added r ...

  Jimmie Johnson is about to do something only one other driver in the almost-60 year history of NASCAR has managed -- win his third straight championship. That he's effectively mocking his, uh, competition in the process should only underscore the magnitude of the accomplishment. Under most circumstances, the days leading up to the final race of the season, where Johnson need finish only 36th to clinch the title, would be a celebratory slog, with story upon story chronicling ...

It's an almost-annual event in NASCAR -- collective hand-wringing and concern about the state of the sport and its place in America's sporting landscape. However, this year, more than any other in recent memory, there's a real, unpleasant undercurrent to the yearly How are we doing? introspection; and that concern can be seen in all those empty seats ESPN and ABC are struggling so hard not to show you each weekend. (As you watch the next race, notice how quickly th ...