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Another season will come full circle again today on a perfectly shaped racing oval in Florida some 259 miles, as the vulture flies, from where it began nine months ago.

But nothing in or around Homestead reminds you of Daytona Beach, and nothing about racing today reminds you of racing back in February. This is the end of a long, tumultuous season for stock-car racing, and you have to wonder if this is the end of racing's second golden era.

The news this week that Dale Earnhardt Inc. had been merged with another team that doesn't even run the same make of car sent a shockwave through the sport and through the racing town of Mooresville. The reports out of the vast shop out off Dale Earnhardt Highway revealed a dark and ugly end to more than 100 careers at the company operated as a shrine to the man who sparked racing's second golden era.

That the sport will start again next February with only five viable race teams should send a shudder through the South, which built stock-car racing and bankrolled the first golden era through ticket sales and cigarettes.

The word around the garage is that hundreds more could lose jobs all across the sport in the coming days as entire teams fight against disbanding for good and everyone from sponsors to the factory automakers themselves reconsider their budgets for 2009.

In the midst of it all, NASCAR announced this week that it would suspend all testing as of right now. In other words, the Daytona 500 in February will be run without any cars touching the track before SpeedWeeks.

That means Jimmie Johnson is already leading the 2009 point standings on his way to an unprecedented fourth straight series title.

Somewhere along the way, racing has become boring. Today's finale comes at the end of the most boring season in memory, a year that included a total of two wins by the three biggest names -- Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart. Gordon hasn't won this season, something that hasn't happened since 1993, his first season in racing.

Played out against the backdrop of a national economic crisis, the one sport that depends most on the economy appears powerless for the first time in a generation.

A week ago, with 34 laps left in a nationally televised race, ABC pulled the plug on the coverage and sent its viewers to its cable friend ESPN2 so it could air "America's Funniest Home Videos."

Think about that for a second.

In the second to last race of the season, the last playoff race before the title run, an event with 34 laps to go didn't have enough pull with network execs to keep them from kicking it over to a subsidiary cable outfit so they could air a low-brow, low-budget show for shut-ins.

Today's race is scheduled to end at 8 p.m. when ABC will air "Extreme Makeover: Utah Edition."

Someone this week asked Rex White, the 1960 NASCAR champion, if racing would even survive, and White sort of said "sort of."

"I think it'll go on, and NASCAR will survive because people that are race fans will come to see some kind of racing," White said. "It might not be the same as it is today, but racing will continue on."

Hardly a ringing endorsement for the future of stock-car racing.

Johnson, probably the most bland sports superstar in the modern history of sports superstars, will be crowned the 2008 NASCAR champion, just as he was after the two previous seasons, just as he will be after next season, which effectively begins Monday with no testing and no competition between now and February.

The sport leaves Florida today with three teams capable of winning a title -- Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Racing and Richard Childress Racing.

Only two other teams won races in 2008 -- Penske Racing won twice, and Evernham Racing won twice. That means 13 race teams didn't win races this season and 13 won't win next season, either.

That's not racing. That's math.

The old philosophy in racing simply no longer exists.

Junior Johnson, who owned the cars Cale Yarborough raced to three straight titles in the 70s, said he wanted his drivers to win or bring back nothing but a steering wheel.

Drivers used to come back to the garage areas with smoking, mangled, oil-streaked clumps of sheet metal and a smile on their faces. Now they come back with perfectly manicured machines built according to NASCAR specs and immediately get out of the cars complaining about the tire maker or aero push or some other stupid excuse then get escorted to personal helicopters or Gulfstream G150s to fly over the traffic jams.

Some drivers are raking in millions and millions, while the fab shop men who built the cars are facing layoffs this week.

The planes leaving Florida today will fly over crowds of people facing the same economic pressures, and with the dwindling attendance we saw in the late races this year you have to wonder how many will return to Florida in February.

Racing enjoyed a long golden period from the time Richard Petty first went to Florida until the tobacco money began to run out in the 90s.

Somehow, and probably because of Earnhardt and Gordon, it had another great run that resulted in a television contract that turned the teams into monopolies and the drivers into accountants.

Now it's staggering under the dull weight of money and greed.

Under the Florida skies today, they'll gather one more time to watch a bunch of rich guys driving in circles.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com