After Saturday, Jeff Gordon may not be around to contend for the NASCAR championship.

That's like an October without the Braves, a Steve McQueen movie without a car chase, a supermarket tabloid without an Elvis sighting.

Gordon hasn't won since Talladega in April. He went through a stretch of finishing - or not finishing as the case may be - 30th or worse in six out of eight races. He is 12th in the Nextel Cup standings, 30 points out of 10th and a spot in the Chase for the Nextel Cup.

If it weren't for Dale Earnhardt Jr., who spent the season in a soap opera, Gordon would have been the biggest flop since the Dukakis campaign.

He has to leapfrog 11th-place Ryan Newman and 10th-place Jamie McMurray, and has only Saturday's race at Richmond to save his bacon.

There seemed to be a couple of Jeff Gordons on the line in Tuesday's NASCAR teleconference.

The half-empty Gordon:

"The way we've been this year, honestly if we perform this weekend like we have the last few, we don't belong in the Chase anyway.''

The half-full Gordon:

"On one side of it, I look at it, how exciting it is and great that it is. ... It actually blows me away that basically if we get in the top 10, we still have a shot at it.''

Gordon doesn't really deserve that shot.

He's not just 30 points out of 10th. He's 671 points out of first.

After Richmond, he - or whoever does finish 10th - will be 45 points out of first.

You play golf with your buddies, maybe you get a mulligan off No. 1 and No. 10. But you don't get to skip the tee shot altogether and sit the ball down in gimmie range.

That's what NASCAR is allowing nine drivers to do.

That's the problem with this system.

Points leader Tony Stewart has been brilliant. He has won five times. He has been in the top five 12 times. He is ahead of second-place Greg Biffle by 209.

That shrinks to a five-point lead Saturday night. If nothing else, tweak the system that takes into account the cushion the leader has built. Make it five-point increments, as it is now, plus five more points for every 50 points you trail the leader.

Part of NASCAR's charm was that it was once different from other sports. Now, like the rest (with the notable exception of college football), it has a playoff that rewards not consistency and excellence but just who's the hottest and luckiest at the end.

But NASCAR czar Brian France invented this system to assure its champion wouldn't be determined until the final race - coincidentally, at a speedway owned by the France family - and to keep interest going.

And, mostly, to keep TV ratings high as NBC goes head-to-head with college and NFL football.

What NASCAR created was still more reality TV.

Just give me the reality.

And the reality is, the Chase for the Nextel Cup doesn't belong.