Ty Dillon on the verge of becoming an all-time NASCAR legend

When NASCAR announced the inaugural in-season tournament, they completely altered the history of the sport as we know it.

NASCAR management knows that fans absolutely love gimmicks. Not a day goes by without everybody on Twitter praising modern leadership for implementing playoffs, thus reducing the meaning of actually scoring points over a 36-race season. The stick-and-ball element of the sport's championship process is a fan-favorite.

Additionally, the size of the fanbase has absolutely skyrocketed since stages were introduced in 2017. NASCAR fans had been begging non-stop for decades for the sport to award points to the top 10 drivers at random laps during each race. After all, why not? Points don't mean much anymore, anyway.

NASCAR went a step further this year, announcing the inaugural In-Season Challenge. Instead of March Madness, TNT Sports' first portion of a Cup Series broadcast schedule since 2014 sees June/July Madness, with head-to-head matchups determining which drivers advance from one round to the next.

But it gets even better.

NASCAR opened up the tournament at a superspeedway, which basically meant that the three seeding races (which I'm wholeheartedly convinced some drivers had no idea were even happening) were meaningless. It was all about not wrecking and getting a good matchup draw. Several drivers who did not advance outperformed others who did.

Again, this is exactly what fans of guys like Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt have been yearning for for many years. This is what was going to bring back NASCAR's long-lost core fanbase and bring the sport back to the glory days.

Race number two being at Chicago, the only street course in Cup Series history and a track that the hard-core fans absolutely adore, was an added bonus.

And by the way, they even let people eat on the track, further solidifying the indisputable fact that this event is bigger than the Super Bowl.

Now eight drivers remain after back-to-back demolition derbies, and these are eight drivers who might as well be battling for the title of NASCAR GOAT.

I've already inquired about where to pre-order my Ty Dillon 2025 NASCAR in-season champion t-shirt before it becomes available a few weeks from now.

Petty and Dale never came close to winning anything quite this prestigious, and all Dillon has to do now is outperform Alex Bowman, who hasn't finished higher than 15th at Sonoma Raceway in four years, to get to the semifinals, where one of the Legacy Motor Club drivers will await.

On the other side of the bracket, only one driver has a career victory, and none of them have won this year. Much like on Dillon's side, where only one is set to enter the quarterfinal round with back-to-back top 19 finishes, only one of them is set to enter the quarterfinal round with back-to-back top 13 finishes.

If you couldn't tell after the first sentence, this whole rant is pure sarcasm.

Everybody, other than the mainstream media who predictably defended this idea (and laughably refused to criticize any part of the race in Mexico) to the ends of the earth, saw this coming.

NASCAR's way of "spicing up" the middle of the season was completely unnecessary and arguably their biggest gimmick yet. The lone positive is the fact that very few drivers actually seem to care about it, and no, it has no effect on the actual point standings or playoff picture. The five "tournament" races are still normal regular season races.

And boy is that a relief, given the fact that just three of the eight remaining drivers have ever won a race (and none of them have won during this tournament).

For what it's worth, the guy who has won two of the five races since the seeding process began wasn't even eligible for the tournament. So you could argue that NASCAR didn't even do the gimmick right, and now we have six or seven questionable drivers left among the eight still eligible for the $1 million prize.

Without going into detail on the exact numbers, which our contributing writer Ryan McCafferty did in an earlier article, suffice it to say that the eight advancing drivers of this tournament so far have been "mid" at best. Dillon got here by surviving at Atlanta Motor Speedway with his first top 10 finish in three years and running 20th in Chicago behind a number of part-timers, including Katherine Legge.

I'm not even trying to knock Ty Dillon here; it's a product of the system. He is doing what he needs to do, even if it isn't much. Good on him, even if it is somewhat amusing that he is 32nd in the point standings and has as good of a chance as anyone to win the whole thing.

Let's also be honest about the whole tournament concept. You could technically implement a "five-race tournament" in any stretch of five races and crown a champion based on the matchups in play, since no two drivers are competing against the same driver.

Take the results of the five races from Atlanta to Homestead-Miami Speedway earlier this season, for example, and you can generate an entire bracket if you want. My guess is that Ty Gibbs wins the "championship", since he finished 32nd, 34th, 25th, 22nd, and 25th in those races (with two DNFs). All about the matchups.

Okay, okay; don't give them any more ideas.

All of that said, NASCAR wanted to make things interesting for TNT Sports' return as a part of the new media deal, and for better or worse, this has indeed achieved that, even if the whole thing is a bit goofy (and no, NASCAR hasn't magically recovered its core fanbase from several decades ago).

And when the Brickyard 400 rolls around, surely there will be tens of millions of folks tuning in, not just in the United States, but worldwide, to watch Ty Dillon and Zane Smith battle it out for 27th place and the right to walk away with $1 million dollars as the first-ever tournament champion.

The King could never. The Intimidator could never. Just remember that.

Sonoma Raceway is scheduled to host the Toyota/Save Mart 350, race three of the NASCAR In-Season Challenge, this Sunday, July 13. TNT Sports is set to provide live coverage beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET.