The American Boat Racing Association's Washington swing wrapped up -- and at the very least -- the debate over whether or not Dave Villwock's U-1 (elect) Miss E-Lam Plus will sweep the unlimited hydroplane season ended in Seattle with Steve David's victory in the U-6 Oh Boy! Oberto.

At the very least, that takes away about half of what I had to talk about.

I have only myself to blame, really. I skipped out of the Columbia Cup early this year (meaning before dark) because I was facing a pretty long drive back to Colorado the next day. Telling you that serves no purpose other than to illustrate how much of a wuss I have become in my advanced age.

But it also underscores another point that I have been struggling to figure out how to make. This year's Columbia Cup was, well, a little bit of a disappointment. And it has taken a little bit of reflecting to come to terms with it.

This is normally the column that I use to rant, rave, and ultimately go on about how great I thought the racing was and how happy I was to have witnessed it. This year, I just didn't have it in me. Problem was, it just really wasn't. Saying so would have made me a total fraud.

I don't recall a race that I have witnessed that was as dilluted competition-wise in quite some time. You'd probably have to rewind all the way back to the days when we were debating whether or not Dave Villwock's U-1 (defending again) Miss Budweiser would sweep the season to come up with a race that was as mediocre as the 2007 edition of the Columbia Cup was.

I guess that's the biggest problem with this year's race. It just didn't live up to the hype -- or the potential. At least back then, we were kind of expecting the outcome, so we could look on the bright side at the teams that were gaining ground, or the competition that took place behind the leader.

But not this year. The fleet rolled into town this year loaded for bear, just seeming as though somebody would have to burst at the seams and have the breakout performance we were expecting. Last season finished with a bang, high points coming down to the final heat of the final race, and the outcome decided by little more than a position at the finish. It was everything anyone could have asked for.

The season finish also set a major tone for 2007. Hydroplane racing was starting to feature parity in a way that it had never before. And this year was going to be a real barn-burner.

A rookie team had become national champion, and a new dynasty (Formulaboats' U-1 and U-5) was enjoying a very successful infancy. New boats built to a race-winning standard were coming out for two teams (U-6 and U-21). A former champion (Villwock) was gearing up for a return to stardom, and a team that had struggled at times and been brilliant at others (U-37) was looking for stability somewhere in the middle. Friends, we had plenty to be excited about.

Fast-forward to the last weekend in July. The unlimited fleet limped into town battered and bruised, shaken up by numerous flips by most of the top teams, and severe damage sustained by several more. Boats were broken, drivers were bruised or (in the case of the defending national champion, Mike Allen) broken. The fleet was simply decimated, its confidence shattered.

What happened in between the season opener at the end of June and the time the first boat entered the Lampson pits was little short of tragic. The season began in Evansville, Ind. looking like it hadn't really ended. But by the end of the day, Jeff Bernard in the U-5 Formulaboats.com, Mike Allen in the U-1 Formulaboats.com II, and Jean Theoret in the U-37 Beacon Plumbing had all flipped their boats.

After nine heats of racing, nearly a third of the fleet was licking some pretty serious wounds. But the suffering wasn't over. Most of the rest would endure some sort of major problem in the races that followed in Madison, Ind. and Detroit, Mich.

And one, Allen in the U-1, would flip again, doing serious enough damage to the boat that it wouldn't be ready to race the Washington swing, and doing enough damage to Allen that he would have to cede the cockpit of his backup boat to rookie Jimmy Shane.

In the past, Tri-Cities has been a place where teams have turned the corner and made magic. The season seems to come in two halves -- a Midwest half, and a West Coast half. And as the first race of the West Coast half, we've always been a place for fresh starts and beginning anew. Not so this year.

By the time racing was wrapping up, the tone throughout the pits seemed to be one of wanting to get it over with. We were just a speed bump on the way to somewhere more important -- Seattle, home turf for most of the teams and several sponsors.

Before racing even began, I heard from several teams that were looking past Tri-Cities toward Seafair weekend. It was the grim resignation of survival. One team even went so far as to say that they were saving their stuff for San Diego! Whatever the reason, our Columbia Cup featured a battle of teams whose hearts just didn't seem to be in it.

It may all just be prop wash, but I really think we got less than we deserved. Tri-Cities has been awful kind to the ABRA and its fleet of boats. Want to talk about home territory? The ABRA's official mailing address is a P.O. box in Pasco.

But it didn't seem that many teams actually showed up with their "A" game. My observation from beginning to end was that Villwock's E-Lam team did. They clicked, and put their best foot forward. And if it's been even remotely like that all season, then they deserve every victory just that much more.

But you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If you are a team that has its best foot forward, Seattle should be a world away. When I talk to you on Saturday afternoon, Joe Teamowner, you shouldn't be looking any further than 4:30 on Sunday afternoon. The Columbia Cup should have your undivided attention. If you're talking to me before or during the race about another race that is a week away on the other side of the state, you're not focused on the job at hand.

And that it would seem heralds a bit of a flaw in the sport right now. When teams show up to race, I don't think it's out of line to expect nothing short of their best. That's what fans pay for, and more importantly, that's what sponsors pay for.

I can accept caution after such a frightful season, to a certain extent. But not to the point of accepting teams just showing up. Nobody was there because they had to be. But it sure seemed like a couple thought they did.

I could distill part of that to the money situation again. The pittance that most teams get from local sponsors (bless their souls) probably only covers the expenses of racing should the team escape in one piece. Preseason preparation, any testing that may get done, repairs to the boat, and any shortfalls in sponsorship and tow money ultimately comes out of the owners' pocket. In the end, our team owners are paying (and in some cases paying big) for the privilege of racing. Can you blame them outright for taking it easy on the goods?

Before I go further, let me make sure that nobody misconstrues my comments as being a slight on our local sponsors, or those of other race sites. Quite the opposite. They've filled a much-needed gap that has been left open by our sport's stunning lack of national sponsorship. Let's hear it for the local sponsors.

But the benefits of a national sponsorship program -- those extra perks like money for testing, etc. -- are illustrated in plain type by the success of the Madison, Ind.-based Oh Boy! Oberto, with its new boat and two-time defending driver's champion Steve David. While I can't say for certain, I highly doubt that what a team gets from local sponsors at each of the six races is 1/6th of what a national sponsor pays for the year.

Believe it or not, I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. There's one other thing that really rubbed me the wrong way about this year's race, and that was the format. And it all ties back together.

In my youth, I was all for as much racing as I could get. If we had enough boats to add a C-flight to each heat, I was ecstatic. But this year, the formula just didn't work.

In a season where teams were broken, and maybe some were taking it easy just a bit, dividing the field into three groups instead of two just served to dilute the competition even more, and widen the gaps between those were brought their A-games, and those who didn't.

It actually had me wishing at one point that they would simply eliminate some boats after the first heat or two, and drop back to two groups. But they didn't. And watching Jean Theoret beat Chris Bertram by half a lap in a two-boat heat 3B was almost unbearable. It was the second time that weekend that Theoret had scored a distant victory over Bertram as the last men standing in a heat.

And to think I was actually wondering if I had gotten it wrong after heat 3A delivered a deck-to-deck battle between David and Bernard. Sadly, it was to be the most excitement we'd get.

Now this is where it gets a little tricky. I've finished griping about the shortcomings of the weekend, and I've got to either suggest possible solutions or simply be chalked up as another blowhard that is trashing the sport.

Those of you who have been reading my columns for a while or who know me, know that I love the sport like no other. Maybe that's why I'm so bent about the lack of competition. Columbia Cup weekend has been the highpoint of every single summer for my entire life. This year, I took a week off of work and drove 1,200 miles each way to get my boat racing fix. So yeah, I feel a little bit short-changed.

I've written before about my fears that the sport couldn't sustain itself with the level of parity it enjoyed without making some changes. I worried that, with owners footing the bill like I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, the fleet's overall quality would begin to suffer. If teams are saving their stuff at one race just so they can have a better showing at another, then I fear we may have reached that point.

The 2007 was the best growth year we've seen in a decade. Three brand-new, top-flight boats, two completely new teams, and the lasting aftertaste of the most dramatic season finale in 20 years. On paper, it looks like it should have been incredible. But reality hasn't been so kind. Still, the growth should be encouraging.

Having too many boats shouldn't be a bad thing. I'll take A, B and C heats every darned weekend if the competition is good. And that's the catch. If the money losses are such that teams can't sustain the effort to run six races a year, doesn't more races mean more losses over all?

But that's just what the sport needs. The belles are showing up for the ball, but they need more money to make it work. And more money can only come from more national sponsors. And yet, the sport has become more and more regionalized. A mere six races a year -- probably half of what it should be -- in only four states. Hardly worth a sponsor's time or attention. But it means the world to the teams that are craving those dollars.

So I am forced to call on the ABRA again to look beyond the immediate problems and take a look at the big picture. We need more races per year. Period. Six isn't cutting it. We need to get grow outside of Washington and Indiana and make our presence known where we used to be famous -- Florida, New York, Nevada, and elsewhere.

And every flipping race should be, as a minimum, on ESPN or ESPN2. Or the Speed channel. Someplace where they can be seen, and where sponsors can reap some sort of real return for their investment.

I can't overstate the importance of a television package in this all. Race attendance in places such as Tri-Cities is, what, about 25,000-35,000? Bump it up a little in Seattle and Detroit, and you're still conservatively figuring that a little more than a quarter of a million people a year actually see a race live each year.

How much per person is a sponsor willing to spend to put their product in front of them? A dollar? That's pretty expensive from an advertising standpoint, and that's really what it's all about. The value of that advertising/sponsorship money can be much more fully realized with a television package in place on a national scale.

In a lot of ways, it's a catch-22. TV coverage costs money, racing costs money, and sponsorship simply isn't a given, but somebody's got to foot the bill. And it boils down to the owners. In that respect, our opportunity may already have been squandered by maintaining the status quo for as long as we have. Especially when the likely return on investment is pretty slim, and is at best, a gamble.

But it's time for the ABRA to decide whether the sport is simply going to wallow in its present state until the state of its teams declines to the point that the competition stinks again, or whether it's going to roll the dice and take a chance on regaining some glory, to the benefit of those same teams.

I, for one, am all for the latter. It's probably easier for me to say because I don't have any real money at stake. But I do have some pride. And a love for the sport that goes pretty deep. If we wallow, and Tri-Cities joins other smaller-market race sites as being speed bumps on the way to someplace bigger, I'm going to get cranky.

Other folks will probably do worse. They won't come at all. By that point, we'll have even bigger problems than we want to face now. Our race sites will suffer, and the speed bumps will eventually go away. And that's a definite move in the wrong direction.