Sometimes playoff formats work; sometimes they don't. Sometimes the most deserving are rewarded; sometimes there's a fluke.
Hello, NASCAR fluke; goodbye, Kyle Larson.
NASCAR's playoff has failed to reward one of its most deserving and in doing so revealed its greatest flaw: It is harshly unforgiving in a sport where competitors must deal with more things out of their own control than in any other.
The two best teams in baseball are meeting in the World Series. The two best teams in the NBA have met in the finals the last two years. But March Madness sent a seventh seed to the Final Four and the Stanley Cup final featured the eighth-seeded Nashville Predators. Such is the expanded world of playoff sports we've been forced to embrace for the sake of TV ratings.
Now, NASCAR's playoff moves along without Larson, whose No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet team was the best team in the sport behind the No. 78 Toyota of Martin Truex Jr.
Larson won four races and finished in the top 10 19 times in 32 starts this year. But he blew a motor at Kansas on Sunday and missed making the top eight drivers to advance to the next tier by nine points. It was the first blown motor in 139 starts for him at Ganassi.
Larson, with four wins, is ineligible for the title. Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott, with one win between them, advance. So does Denny Hamlin, with just two wins.
NASCAR has tried to reward of a mixture of consistency and victory. It has tried with mixed success to promote more exciting racing each week in stage racing.
It should "freeze the field" with the current eight contenders and let the overall performance in the final four races, not just the final one, determine the champion. That wouldn't help Larson, but it would be more fair.
"I guess I'm not stunned, because freak things happen in every sport," Larson told reporters. "I mean you look at every year in the past and a lot of times, most every time at least in the new playoff format era, not always does the best team win. We've been consistent and just now got bit."
It's one thing getting bit in Kansas. It's another getting bit at Homestead-Miami.
Face it. There's no more deserving champion this year than Truex, a seven-time winner who has been either first or second in points since April and has failed to finish only three nonplate races. But one glitch at Homestead-Miami and he could be watching somebody else hoist a championship trophy.
As Larson said, "I hate that we blew an engine and blew our shot at the championship, but luck is a big factor of our sport."
Some simple tweaks and NASCAR could make luck a smaller factor.
' Last race: Martin Truex Jr. won the Hollywood Casino 400 for his seventh win of the season.
' Next race: First Data 500, Martinsville Speedway, Sunday, Oct. 29, 3 p.m. EDT, NBC Sports Network. Our pick to win: Kyle Busch.
' Pit notes: Bubba Wallace Jr., 24, will be the full-time driver in the Richard Petty Motorsports No. 43 Ford next season and the first black racer to compete full time in NASCAR in more than 45 years. He made four starts in the 43 this season. It was an emotional win at Kansas for Truex, who learned the night before that crew member Jim Watson, 58, died of a heart attack. Amy Earnhardt will drive the pace car at Martinsville this Sunday.
' Our fast five: 1. Martin Truex Jr. 2. Kyle Busch. 3. Kyle Larson. 4. Brad Keselowski. 5. Chase Elliott.
' What they're saying: "We didn't look at that as much as NASCAR did. We just needed a driver. We didn't care if he was green, white or purple, if he gets the job done." - Richard Petty, on diversity interests in hiring Bubba Wallace
Contact Mark McCarter at markfmccarter@gmail.com