This winter has been a busy one so far for NASCAR.

First they announce that drivers will only be allowed to win one series championship and now they appear to be tinkering with their points system, which has been in place since 1975. The basic concept is to award the race winner 43 points and then decrease the points awarded by one for each position. There are also a few changes to the Chase, but nothing too earth shattering.

Honestly, this seems like an awful idea. You know how folks are always bent over NFL teams who have already secured playoff births playing it safe at the end of the year? Yeah, welcome to 85 percent of Sprint Cup races if this system takes places.

NASCAR does need to be fixed, but it is going to take more than fancy new points system to revamp and revitalize the sport.

So here is The Back Porch's Top Five ways to save NASCAR!

1. Shorten the season.
The 2010 season spanned from roughly Valentine's Day to Thanksgiving. Ridiculous. Once football season gets cranking, the fan base starts to check out and by November, they hardly even know what track the series is at each week.

Let's cut it back. Start the Chase at the beginning of August and plan on crowning a champ the first week in October. Sure we might have to cancel the second showing at some tracks, but it's not like every track is selling out all the time as is. The shorter season will increase the urgency among the drivers, which the fans will be able to see and feel, thus creating excitement. Also, this gets NASCAR out of the way before college football, the NFL, and the MLB playoffs totally dominate it.

2. Automatic qualifying races.
Let's face it, some race are more important. We should treat them that way. The Daytona 500, The Brickyard, the 600 at Charlotte, and both races at Bristol are just different. Why not make a handful of such races automatic qualifiers for the Chase? Why not put some real weight into winning the most important races of the season? Think about how intense a late July race could become if any driver who won it could make the playoffs. Of course this would also help prevent the Daytona 500 winner from falling off the map by July.

3. Replace the road tracks with dirt tracks.
Have you ever watched a Rally car race? They are way more entertaining that a NASCAR road race. I know there are fans out there who swear they love the Watkins Glens of the world, but I honestly believe they are all talk. Road tracks are a waste of a weekend right now, but that could all change with some dirt and a couple jumps. Adding a little Dukes of Hazzard is just what the circuit needs.

4. Eliminate multi-car teams.
I know they have tried to cut down on this in recent years, but it still needs work. Can you imagine any other sport allowing a single owner to own multiple teams in the same division? No way! Let's cut it back to one each, let the money spread itself back out, and let some rivalries get cranked back up.

5. Make the Chase more interesting.
The Chase is what it is; a gimmicky way to draw interest at the end of the season. If you are going to have a gimmick, you might as well go next level with it.

For starters, add pit stop challenges to each Chase race and award bonus points for the winners. Everyone talks about it being a team effort, so let's give the team a stage to shine on.

Let's also add a "best in show" award for each race and attach bonus points to it as well. It doesn't have to be as many points, but tell me it wouldn't be fun to see how creative some guys could get with their paint schemes?

Ok, here is the biggie. Add something for the other non-Chase drivers to race for. Keep track of the points for drivers who did not qualify for the Chase and allow the winner of that group to be automatically entered into the following year's Chase. Now of course this would be pending on them staying with the same race team and if they switched, they would lose the bid.

Now I'm not saying every one of these changes is perfect, but I am saying they would make the sport way more interesting than it currently is and would appeal to many of the fans who have turned away from it.

What do you think NASCAR should do to improve ?