“I Don’t Wanna Be the NFL” – Brad Keselowski Rallies for the Winningest Driver to Win the Championship Despite Claiming NASCAR’s Superiority

From the sound of things, the winds of change are blowing full speed over the NASCAR post-season. Come 2026, we could witness a total revamp of the current format. Now, it may be unlikely that we ever revert to the full-season points system of the yesteryears—something that set the sport miles apart from other major leagues like the NFL or NBA. But Brad Keselowski is a big backer of that idea.

He believes NASCAR should keep its authenticity and reward consistency over a stroke of luck that’s often hard to find in the high-stakes world of stock car racing.

Brad Keselowski believes NASCAR does not need NFL’s Playoff playbook

RFK Racing and Brad Keselowski are looking ahead to some big things in 2025. Their two-car team recently expanded to a three-car operation with recent addition Ryan Preece, behind the wheel of the #60 Ford ready to shake things up and challenge the competition. That only means Brad K and the group will have extra odds of making a Playoff run next year.

A few days ago, insider Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal reported NASCAR was reviewing its current Playoff format. With top execs like Steve O’Donnell and Elton Sawyer speaking up about the same in recent statements, it’s clear that changes are in the works, sparking plenty of speculation across the NASCAR nation. And countless fans, industry personnel, and drivers like Brad Keselowski believe change has waited too long. At NASCAR’s end-of-season awards ceremony in Charlotte this Saturday, the 40-year-old Cup Series owner-driver answered a few questions for journalist Claire B. Lang. Lang laid out the context for her initial question: “With tweaks potentially coming, what tweaks would you like to see, if any?”

Keselowski was playfully hesitant to answer that at first, but eventually, he replied, “I’m a bit of a traditionalist in some ways… So, I have this yearning for the points format of decades past, which is probably unrealistic. But you know, if I had my complete druthers, like if Jim France called me and said, ‘Brad, you’re in charge….’ I honestly think that the points format should be reflected on wins. And the tiebreaker should have been the final final race, and that should be it…”

“I have a hard time as a competitor and a fan of the sport understanding how drivers with most wins routinely don’t win championships,” declared Brad Keselowski. “And I don’t think that feels right to me. So I would like to see if there was any format changes, more value on race wins as a whole throughout the duration of the season.” Lang proceeded with a follow-up question for the Michigan native This question aimed to probe him about some comparative value between the NFL and NASCAR.

But Keselowski did not wait to hear the entire query. He quickly retorted, “We keep getting caught up in comparisons to other sports. We’re in a lot of ways, better. You know, we have all of our competitors, competing against each other every week. We have incredible fan access. You know great partners. I don’t wanna be the NFL, I don’t wanna be hockey, I don’t wanna be MLB. I do not want to be any of the sports…. And if we can be the best that we can be, I think people will like that.” Clearly, the 2012 Cup Series champion has an unwavering faith in the sport. 

However, it’s not recent news that the NASCAR Playoffs roughly replicate the post-season of larger spectator sports like the NFL and the NBA. At its core, the entire format aims to maximize the excitement of the championship chase. And for what it’s worth, this system has ensured that for most of the last two decades. Sure, stage racing and the round-by-round elimination features might be the next topic of contention when the grievances stray away from the Playoffs. But can there ever truly be a spotless system in a sport with as many stakeholders as stock car racing? Brad Keselowski has argued multiple times.“This format doesn’t feel ideal for rewarding the NASCAR Cup championship.” Still, if recent reports indicate anything, NASCAR seems eager to shake up the postseason with changes to make it even better.

However, the fact remains: there is nothing quite like the NASCAR Playoffs in the broader spectrum of spectator sports and Jeff Gluck might have the best explanation why.

Insider explains why NASCAR isn’t like the NFL

Structure-wise, the NFL Playoffs couldn’t be more similar to the NASCAR season. Both have three rounds of eliminations, which ultimately leads to the grand finale, i.e. the Superbowl in the NFL, where the AFC champions battle the NFC’s best. In NASCAR, the equivalent is the championship at Phoenix Raceway. But the differences lie in the very framework of each sporting discipline. All 36 chartered cars and their respective drivers go against each other every weekend in the Cup Series. Jeff Gluck elaborated on that notion in a recent episode of The Teardown.

In his own words, “I’m so tired of people using that because that’s a one-on-one situation. This would be like the [San Fransico 49ers] and the [Kansas City] Chiefs are in the Super Bowl. Patrick Mahomes is running down the field and he gets tripped up by a player on the Carolina Panthers, who also happened to be on the field and changed the outcome of the race.” Essentially, what Gluck meant by that was, in professional football, it’s all about taking it one opponent at a time, focusing solely on the challenge in front of you. NASCAR drivers do not have that luxury.

Gluck rationalized himself further with the example of Zane Smith’s late caution at the final 4 showdown from a few weeks ago. “Zane Smith had a big impact potentially on this championship. The way the caution came out, when it came out, the restart, all that stuff. He is not part of the playoffs.” Gluck doesn’t believe the Playoffs work, but he’s “open to having them,” simply because of the excitement factor it breeds late into the 36-week NASCAR season. However, “there’s got to be more of a sample size. There’s not the same field every week in motorsports. So if you want to just take one track and say this is what we’re going to do for our champion over and over again, I just don’t think that’s reflective of the entire season.”

Indeed, the measuring stick needs to be higher and clearer, especially with things shaking out the way they have been in NASCAR recently. But should the sport take things back to how it was before Kurt Busch won the inaugural Chase for the championship in 2004, the future could be a lot more interesting. And you can thank all the nostalgia.