NASCAR sucks.

At the Beijing Olympics, swimmer Michael Phelps won eight gold medals, the most ever by an athlete at a single Olympiad.  But, since it's swimming, Phelps didn't swim as fast as he could eight different times, be it in a relay or shorter and longer distances.  Oh no.  Phelps swam forwards, backwards, in an elliptical balderdash and then whatever the hell the "front crawl" is, all at distances of either one hundred or two hundred meters in individual and relay races.

Also at the Beijing Olympics, sprinter Usain Bolt became the fastest human being that ever lived.  He set the world-record in the 100-meter dash — while celebrating well before the finish line — and then won the 200-meter dash — besting Michael Johnson's thought to be untouchable world record.  He then merely helped his Jamaican compatriots set the world record in the 4x100-meter relay.

Bolt — the fastest human being ever — was overshadowed, of course, by Phelps in the media.  Bolt had three things going against him: Phelps being white, Phelps being American, swimming valuing different styles of strokes over fastest times.

Two brothers stand on a driveway and race to the end and back.  The older brother wins.  The younger brother says, "Bet you can't beat me running backwards!"  The older brother then punches the younger brother in the face as hard as he can for suggesting such a patently stupid idea.  While Bolt was no less than the pinnacle of human evolution, Phelps, in relation, was no more than a younger brother who successfully schemed up different ways to beat his older brother, albeit at a very high level of scheming.

Track and Field owns a quality that no other sports does: pure and total objectivity.  The gun goes off, the runner crosses the finish line, that's it.  No ball to be kicked or handed off or thrown, just a runner and a uniform track.  And with that comes the prestige of a world record actually meaning that the accomplishing athlete was the first person to do that.  That the accomplishing athlete redefined the limits of humanity's accomplishments.  While it is without the nuance that one can see when Messi cuts in or when Rodgers threads a ball through the outstretched arms of the secondary into the hands of his own receiver who needs not to break stride, that objectivity is refreshing in a era where contradictory claims are routinely called facts.

NASCAR, meanwhile, is unbridled bullshit.  There exist a few ways to put this: it's void of the romanticism of Track and Field, it's void of the active physical demands of literally every major sport in existence, it's humans pressing a gas pedal and steering a wheel of a vehicle traveling at high speeds around an oval or mostly-oval track.  The g-force argument is the snake oil of sports debate: the drivers aren't creating the g-forces by their own physical exertion but by the intensity of the pressing of their foot on the gas pedal.  If that is the threshold for a sport — experiencing and withstanding g-forces — then merely riding a roller coaster must join the sport fraternity.

To be the best in NASCAR, what does this even mean?  While this question for football or basketball or American football can generally be solved on the field with an eye towards teams and their players and coaches, in NASCAR this question is answered more by mechanics and engineers than anyone resembling an athlete.  LeBron James can carry a team of scrubs deep into the playoffs, but Matt Kenseth can't drive a decisively inferior car to victory without severe ineptitude from his opponents or outrageous luck.  And yes, even though Lance Armstong — regardless of however many aggressive performance-enhancing drugs he's taking — would lose on a tricycle to top competition on their rides of choice, it is with his own energy commitment do the wheels spin, not the consumption of gasoline.

While Track and Field has that objective measuring stick for meaning, NASCAR has "umm, this car went faster than that other car under this specific set of conditions."  There's something to be said for trying to set a drag racing world record — while perhaps not the best use of research and development, engineers are using human knowledge to further what's possible — where as there's nothing to be said for winning a NASCAR race — "oh, neat, look at how little this matters in the grand scope of anything".  To what accomplishment does NASCAR strive for beyond the emittance of fossil fuels?  Length in a period of time?  Airplanes already have that bested.

The achievements of individuals and humanity comprise the backbone of Track and Field.  NASCAR's aims are the inefficient consumption and wasting of resources — not just oil, but the time of engineers, mechanics, crew teams and the time of fans — in the name of nothing but the celebration of that needless gluttony.  Would a manned mission to Mars not be a better celebration of human ingenuity than driving around a mile track 500 times?  Where would that mission be with the labor and capital that's been poured into NASCAR in the last decade?  Or the creation of a green energy infrastructure?

NASCAR is sans merit.  A bastard lone of a point to make or a meaningful objective to fulfill.  An undoubted embarrassment to any society claiming nuance or intelligence.  A leech to progress, a celebration of ignorance.

And definitely not a sport.