DOVER, Del. -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. agrees with Rusty Wallace that a shortened Sprint Cup Series schedule is the right thing to do, but Earnhardt doesn't see it happening.

"A shorter schedule is probably the last thing I would expect to happen," he said Friday. "I can imagine lot of crazy things happening before that would.

"There's just too much money involved. The politics are too much for anything like that to occur. But I know there's not enough demand at the current time for what we run."

In a perfect world, Earnhardt would reduce the schedule from its current number of 36 points races and two all-star events. That's 38 weekends of racing over a 40-week span from mid February until the season finale at Homestead, Fla., on Nov. 18. He didn't specify how many races he would cut.

"Shortening the season would be a good thing and definitely change things for the better," Earnhardt said. "But I think it's a daydream more than anything else. It's never going to be a reality, I believe."

Earnhardt, a big Washington Redskins fan, believes the NFL gets it right with a 16-week regular season (after four or five preseason games) and four weeks of playoff games.

"The model the NFL uses is pretty productive," Earnhardt said. "They seem to have it about right. You can't wait for the season to start, and when it's here, it's gone just as fast and you can't wait for the next one. "