ESPN Sprint Cup

INDIANAPOLIS -- NASCAR at the Brickyard.

For decades, even the suggestion of a NASCAR race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was more than absurd. It was sacrilege.

A car with fenders racing at Indy? Ridiculous.

When the day finally came 13 years ago, auto racing in America was transformed forever.

NASCAR came of age in 1994 when an up-and-coming kid named Jeff Gordon, who spent his teenage years a few miles from the historic track, won the inaugural Brickyard 400.

And it didn't hurt when NASCAR's biggest star -- Dale Earnhardt -- won at Indy one year later.

The controversial decision to bring NASCAR to Indy was an overwhelming success. The doubters were silenced. And there were plenty of doubters.

Many open-wheel devotees were angry when IMS owner Tony George cut a deal with NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr. and agreed to bring a NASCAR race to the hallowed grounds.

At the time, people wondered whether big stock cars would fit on the narrow Indy asphalt. Could they get through the four turns without a demolition derby on every lap?

And it was up for debate about whether local racing fans would show up.

Some folks thought the endeavor was destined to fail. Oh, how wrong they were.

The debut event had more people in the grandstands (close to 300,000) than any stock car race in history. Clearly, it was meant to be.

NASCAR's popularity was growing rapidly in the mid-1990s, but success at Indianapolis brought a new form of legitimacy to a sport often seen in the past as a Southern phenomenon.

Competing at the shrine of auto racing was a big step toward moving NASCAR from a regional sport into the national mainstream.

NASCAR wasn't just for the good ol' boys drinking sweet tea and eating corn bread. It was a sport for everyone in all parts of the country.

Racing on the 2.5-mile rectangle was the catalyst for change. Saying you were a NASCAR fan became a cool thing. Maybe it wasn't hip and trendy, but NASCAR was heading that way.

A giant crowd at Indianapolis proved NASCAR was bigger than many people imagined. The boom had begun. NASCAR officials knew that expansion and realignment to new locales would work.

Within five years of the first race at Indy, NASCAR was racing at new facilities that brought in major markets: Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami and Las Vegas.

In 2001, two other new facilities (Kansas Speedway and Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill.) made Kansas City and Chicago part of the NASCAR nation.

While NASCAR was growing, open-wheel racing was destroying itself. Two years after NASCAR came to Indy, American open-wheel racing underwent a nasty, name-calling split into two separate leagues.

The glory days of the Indy 500 were over. It hasn't been the same since. The two open-wheel leagues (the IRL and Champ Car) remain bitter rivals, while the popularity of open-wheel racing has waned.

Indianapolis residents and die-hard open-wheel fans hate to hear it, but one can make a case that the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard is now the biggest event at IMS each year.

More people show up for Nextel Cup pole day than pole day for the Indy 500. The days when every seat was filled for the Indy 500 are history.

It's still the biggest and best open-wheel event in the world, but the open-wheel split coupled with NASCAR's rise make it less than it once was.

The Allstate 400 is considered by most NASCAR racers to be the second biggest event in the sport to the Daytona 500. It certainly pays that way with the second highest purse in Cup.

Fans may argue over which events rate as NASCAR's majors, but everyone agrees this race is one of them.

As for the on-track racing, Indy won't rank among the most exciting tracks for Cup events. Side-by-side action with lots of passing just doesn't happen here with stock cars.

But fans don't seem to care. They come to see the stars of the sport, and the stars have shined at Indy.

Gordon joined the Indy legends when he won his fourth Allstate 400 in 2004. A win Sunday would make Gordon the first driver to win five events at the Brickyard speedway. Michael Schumacher won five times on the road course in Formula One.

Six times in the last nine years, the man who won at Indy went on to win the Cup championship that season. That includes Tony Stewart in 2005, when the Indiana boy got his lifelong wish by taking the checkered flag at the place he loves.

Dreams come true at Indianapolis, like NASCAR's dream of reaching the big time. When that first green flag waved 13 years ago, NASCAR found something special.

Indy was an important showcase for NASCAR, a platform that helped the sport transition from the backwoods to corporate boardrooms. Acceptance and respect at the Brickyard were the keys that opened those doors.

Terry Blount covers motorsports for ESPN.com. He can be reached at terry@blountspeak5.com.