I’ve been solving the world’s problems this morning.

Okay, just the college football world’s problems. I watched the New Year’s Day bowl games that are no longer on New Year’s. The Big Four have gotten smaller, thanks to the BCS. That’s Bowl Championship Series, which is an odd name since it has, except for lip service, ended “the bowl system.”

After putting some thought into it, I decided it would be best to eliminate conference championship series, play all the bowls with all the teams, even the ones that had losing seasons, and then select four for the BCS. Same number of games. No 5-7 team could possibly make it. For about a year, all would be sweetness and light, which cannot be maintained for any longer in a world that includes Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and several I am insufficiently hip to master.

So what about NASCAR?

Last week I noticed that Richard Petty had been added to the North Carolina Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

The King of Stock Car Racing – regal in the same way that Elvis is for rock ‘n’ roll, Roy Acuff for country music and Tut for Egyptian monarchs – won one race in the B/Altered class at Bristol International Dragway in 1965.

I would be delighted at Petty representing North Carolina in Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol, but I don’t believe his body of work merits a place in a drag racing hall of fame.

It’s the holidays. Sometimes they aren’t fun, but we aspire to it. We pay homage to lords, saviors and the like, but, as Tom T. Hall wrote, in “The Year Clayton Delaney died,” “It could be that the Good Lord likes a little pickin’, too.”

That could be. Like Tom T., I’m banking on it.

It could be that the Good Lord likes a little racin’, too.

I have always had a knack of seeing irony while others are nodding their heads in unthinking adoration.

For instance, many years ago, I was sitting in the media center at Charlotte Motor Speedway – it may have been Lowe’s, then, but who can keep up? – when the late Dale Earnhardt was introduced as the State of North Carolina’s spokesman to prevent teen-agers from driving aggressively.

Earnhardt, rest in peace, was at least nationally and perhaps internationally – or, for all we know, depending on how far Wikileaks reaches, intergalactically – known for driving aggressively.

NASCAR is going to have a Monster year. That much we know. We don’t know if it’s going to be monster like King Kong or a monster like the wall in left at Fenway Park. We know that David Ortiz isn’t going to have a monster year, but we don’t know about Clint Bowyer. We know the odds favor Jimmie Johnson, for, as Bob Seger never sang but discarded, Seven out of 11 ain’t bad.

Two out of three just had a better ring. The syllables fell just right.

The new sponsor is an energy drink more hip than coffee. The good news is apparently that kids love it. The bad news is that it isn’t likely to remedy that short attention span everyone talks about.

NASCAR and Monster Energy announced today a multi-year agreement for the premier series entitlement as well as the prestigious annual NASCAR All-Star Race. Monster Energy, which will begin its tenure as naming rights partner on Jan. 1, 2017, will become only the third company to serve as the entitlement sponsor in NASCAR premier series history, following RJ Reynolds and Sprint/Nextel.

As part of the agreement, the brand also becomes the Official Energy Drink of NASCAR.

I don’t see much use in writing about NASCAR’s big banquet, either beforehand or afterwards. It’s just a big exercise in stock car racing trying to be cool while still reciting commercialized nonsense and pretending that boring speakers aren’t.

As entertainment, it’s the equivalent of a rain delay, though, thankfully, not as long. Everything that’s interesting is already known. For anything else to be interesting, someone other than Dale Earnhardt Jr. would have to be Most Popular Driver.

Well, Donald Trump has declared that an election he won is rigged. Anything’s possible.

​NASCAR races are regular. From February through November, they occur most weekends, most often on Sunday afternoons but sometimes on Saturday or Sunday nights. Sometimes it rains.

Watching them is a habit. Unfortunately, in recent years, it’s become one that millions have kicked.

It’s grown more distant. I don’t go to the tracks anymore. As Tom T. Hall once noted about another addiction (guitar picking), “Ain’t no money in it. It’ll lead you to an early grave.”

It’s been a rapid rise for Daniel Suárez, who captured the 2016 NASCAR XFINITY Series championship Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway by winning the Ford EcoBoost 300 in only his second full-time season of NASCAR national series racing. The driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota is the first Latin American, as well as the first graduate of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program operated by Rev Racing, to win a NASCAR national series title.