Happy Hour: The 'perfect' Chase with just a couple more date swaps

It's time for Happy Hour. As always, tweet us your thoughts or shoot us an email at happyhourmailbag@yahoo.com if you want to participate.

It's crazy to think that it's the beginning of May and we're talking about the 2017. Kudos to NASCAR for getting the schedule out incredibly early this year rather than waiting until the fall to release the schedule for the upcoming season.

It's also one hell of an idea to get Talladega away from the final race of the second round of the Chase. If Talladega is going to stay as part of the Chase (We'd be cool swapping Talladega out for a road course in the Chase provided Talladega gets to keep two dates on the schedule) it needs to be away from an elimination race.

Yeah, a big crash in the second race of the second round could ruin a driver's chances to make the third round, but it's much better for the field to have one more chance at advancement rather than drivers potentially ruing their title hopes as their cars are being towed back to the garage after a 15-car pileup because of a bump draft gone bad.

If we could wave a magic wand and leave politics and preferences out of it, here's how we'd like the Chase to look.

1. Chicago
2. Talladega (or road course if we're getting crazy)
3. New Hampshire
4. Dover
5. Kansas
6. Martinsville (a week earlier would help with any daylight issues)
7. Charlotte (on Sunday afternoon)
8. Texas
9. Phoenix
10. Homestead

It's not a total remodel of the Chase, but it makes minimizes the impact of Talladega's craziness as much as possible. Dover and New Hampshire are only pushed back a week and Martinsville is ahead of Charlotte because of increased sunlight and because it's further north.

Nice to not have the elimination race be a total crapshoot. Bloodthirsty fans may not agree. - Jim

As someone who lives minutes rather than hours from Kansas Speedway, the argument surrounding weather in late October is a strong one. It can be really random around here. The worst case is that it's 45 and cloudy during the race and the conditions negatively impact the racing.

But the Chase concerns outweigh the weather concerns. It's a smart move, and one that wasn't spur of the moment by NASCAR.

Why are some people mean to everyone on Twitter? There seems to be a fair amount of people who feel having an egg avatar means you can say anything you want without any consequences.

Perhaps it's because there are many people who feel they could do the media's job just as well, if not better. Maybe it's an extension of fandom. Many fans second-guess managers and executives and delusionally think they can do a better job than those in charge. So it's only natural to think that fans could believe they'd ask better questions than the people who are asking them in the first place.

You'll never see any griping about being a media member in this space (though griping about other things comes with the territory). Yeah, there's a lot of riff-raff to deal with, but every job has that. And there are a lot of people who wish they would get to watch sports for a living. Keeping this in perspective goes a long, long way.

An over/under of 12 seems about right. You can make a strong argument for both sides. Under if you think the Joe Gibbs Racing dominance is going to extend all summer and over if you think all four Hendrick cars could get a win along with someone like Tony Stewart.

It's easy to get to 10 by assuming Dale Earnhardt Jr., Martin Truex Jr., Kurt Busch and Joey Logano each get a win. Then there's still Kasey Kahne, Chase Elliott, Austin Dillon and others.

Saturday's race is the GoBowling.com 400 and we're hoping to see this creepy guy in victory lane again. And perhaps take a picture. Assuming we will not be eaten.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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