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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Legitimacy (li-jit-uh-muh-see) noun. The state or quality of being legitimate.
Synonyms: rightfulness, lawfulness, legality
That’s a word that has been used a lot since Sunday evening, when Joey Logano earned his third NASCAR Cup Series championship by outrunning three other title contenders to win the race and the title at Phoenix Raceway. Spoken so much so, that the 34-year-old future first-ballot Hall of Famer was asked about it shortly after he had earned two trophies in one night to become only the 10th driver in NASCAR‘s 76-year history to become a three-time series champion.
Big surprise, he didn’t like that very much.
“For someone to say this isn’t real, that’s a bunch of bulls—. In my opinion, that’s wrong,” Logano said. “This is something that everyone knows the rules when the season starts. We figured out how to do it the best and figured out how to win. It’s what our team has been able to do for the last three years. So, I don’t like people talking that way. You know what I mean?”
We do, but that won’t stop the questioning of it. Why? Because of those very rules that he pointed out. More accurately, because of the promise given when those rules were introduced initially two decades ago and emphatically repeated when they were overhauled one decade ago. A tiered postseason elimination-based bracket that trims the field from 16 to eight to four to one, a model that is the modus operandi for stick-and-ball sports but at the time a wildly radical departure for motorsports. That promise? A stated goal to place “an emphasis on winning.”
Wining isn’t something that Logano did a lot of during the 26-race “regular season,” with only one victory earned: a demolition derby five-OT affair at Nashville Superspeedway that saw Logano, who was running 15th when the race reached it originally scheduled distance, slice and dice his way through the chaos to earn his 33rd career victory and punch his ticket into the NASCAR Playoffs.
Once that postseason started, he won its very first race at the Daytona-like Atlanta Motor Speedway, advancing to the Round of 12. In that round’s final event he was initially eliminated, but then moved on when Alex Bowman was disqualified for failing postrace inspection. Then, Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe expertly navigated a fuel-mileage affair to take the Round of 8’s first event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, securing his Championship 4 spot in the finale, where he won by holding off defending champion and teammate Ryan Blaney and another title contender, William Byron. Logano charged from fifth to seize the lead from Byron off a restart with just under 54 laps remaining and held the field off from there.
At the start of every round, Logano was forced to claw his way from the lower levels of the standings. His season average finish of 17.1 is the worst of any Cup champ in 76 years of NACAR racing. His 7 top-5s and 13 top-10s place him outside the top 10 in both categories this season. But Monday morning he was wearing the ring.
In other words, the No. 22 team survived calamity, expertly played the hands they were dealt, took advantage of second chances they were given — which is never a given — and ended up winning four races, the second-highest total of any driver this year, two of which they inarguably just simply outran the competition.
You know, like champions do.
“Because if the rules were the old way, we would play it out differently, wouldn’t we?” Logano continued on Sunday night. “So, I just think that’s just a bunch of hearsay back there, and people have to accept what the times are. Times change, right, and I don’t know if you have a lot of the moments we have today without the Playoff system that we have.”
Taking away from Logano’s title because of the system he has been told to race within, trying to brand it as illegitimate, is an unfair framing of what he has just accomplished. It would be like saying that every MLB team who has won the World Series after making the postseason as a Wild Card — eight since 1997 — aren’t legitimate champions because they didn’t play under the same rules as teams prior to MLB postseason expansion 1994. If this January, at the close of the first edition of the new 12-team College Football Playoff, Boise State or SMU or even a three-loss Georgia ends up winning it all, are we going to say it is illegitimate — by definition lawless, illegal, unsanctioned — because they found a way to defeat an undefeated Oregon or third-ranked Ohio State?
No, because the higher-ranked teams who led the league all year failed to take care of their business. Just as Kyle Larson, who won a series-high four regular-season races, carried a head start into the postseason because of it and won one race each in the first two rounds of the Playoffs. But then he failed to beat Logano, Tyler Reddick and Blaney in the Round of 8. He didn’t take care of his business like those others did when it mattered most. Like the 2007 New England Patriots or the 2016 Golden State Warriors. They were truly great. The best all season long. Just not at the end. Just like Larson.
“The only reason why they don’t say this about other sports is because they didn’t change the Playoff system. But the Playoff system in other sports is not much different than what this is,” Logano, a lifelong NHL fan, continued Sunday night. “You can have a great regular season and it seeds you better for the Playoffs. That doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to go all the way to the Super Bowl, or the Stanley Cup Playoffs, or the NBA Finals. It doesn’t matter. It might help you, and it’s the same way in NASCAR, the way we have the rules now is that you set yourself up much better.”
That’s how postseasons work. No, it’s not how it worked in NASCAR until this last decade, but it’s also not exactly new. And the old system wasn’t as old you think, either.
The last of the old-school “all races count the same” season-long points system that was replaced in 2004 had largely been in place with minor tweaks here and there since 1975. Prior that that, the way NASCAR crowned its champions was changed more often than Serena Williams changed dresses as ESPYs host. Richard Petty’s seven Cup Series titles were won using six different points systems, including one five-year stretch where The King earned four Cups by way of four varying points scales.
So, were those Cups illegitimate? When Dale Earnhardt routinely outpunched rivals who won more races than he did — only two of his seven titles he was also the season leader in wins — should those not count? Because if you watched The Intimidator back in the day, he was always the master of knowing how to squeeze the most points out of a Sunday and a season, even when he was having a bad day.
“It drove me crazy because there were two years in particular where I felt like we were kicking his ass every weekend and I know we had a lot more wins than he did,” Rusty Wallace recalled of his old rival to me last year, speaking of Earnhardt’s back-to-back 1993-94 when Wallace racked up 18 wins to Earnhardt’s 10, but he finished second and third behind the Man in Black in title fights that weren’t particularly close. “He always knew exactly how the system worked, where to find a few extra points and where to take advantage of others’ mistakes. That’s how you win championships.”
Indeed, it is. Ask Logano.
While we are in the asking mood, it is also totally fair to ask questions about the current postseason format. NASCAR officials admitted Sunday night that they were open to tweaks, just as they were when they introduced the elimination format in 2014 and then added stage racing and playoff points three years later.
But for now, in the words of NASCAR president Steve Phelps during last week’s State of the Sport media session, “The format is the format.”
Logano raced within that format, peaked at the right time within that format, and beat the other 33 drivers who raced full-time within that format. That’s not his fault. That’s his accomplishment.
Legitimately.