Imagine: a World Series of Motorsport

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It's a weird time for the motorsports industry. A tough time. Yet that time is taking place in an era when the on-track product across all forms of mechanized competition is the best it has ever been. Ever. (Sorry, way-back whiners, but it's true.)

So, how does the industry turn a slow decline into a sharp, snappy uptick? How does this weekend's once-epic Sprint Cup Series event recapture past glory? How can the many and varied forms of American motorsports reintroduce themselves to the nation that once embraced them so fully?

I have an idea. It's a proposal that would require unprecedented cooperation from longtime rivals. An ego-swallowing recipe that would create a grand alphabet soup of racing sanctioning bodies, served up on the greatest motorsports platter of them all.

Let's call it the World Series of Motorsport (WSM).

Imagine a weeklong Bonnaroo of racing, held in and around the Racing Capital of the World this very week, the one time of year when there is little or no other competition for the attention of the American sports fan. A 10-day motorsports march, bookended by this nation's two biggest racing series, with every other group featured in the days and nights in between.

For a minute, let's forget politics. Let's forget the corporate suits who always step in to ruin everything. Let's be willing to bend the space-time continuum of logistics -- although only a tad -- and allow ourselves to think about a racing utopia where gearheads of all disciplines can lock Nomex-encased arms and remind the world of just how ridiculously awesome this world is.

Trust me. This would work.

As I said earlier ... trust me, this would work.