On Friday night, the season-ending banquet in Las Vegas will be held to award the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship to Jimmie Johnson for a fifth consecutive year.

Five straight championships for Johnson came in a sport and a series that, before him, had only seen as many as three in a row happen. That was only done once. It doesn’t matter whether or not you think NASCAR is a sport; winning a professional championship five years in a row deserves recognition.

Because NASCAR has a strong stigma, Johnson’s accomplishments have largely gone unnoticed by sports fans — especially our generation, which generally just isn’t interested in a sport it can’t go out and do whenever it pleases.

The argument over whether or not NASCAR is a sport is a discussion for another time. Johnson’s five straight Cups will go down as one of the greatest eras for a team or athlete in professional sports history.

Unfortunately, the feat won’t be recognized for a long time.

Over the history of professional sports in the United States, greatness generally has not been recognized while it has been happening. People hate to see someone or some team dominate in sports. It’s the “Rudy” or “Hoosiers” mentality of rooting for the underdog, or the team that hasn’t ever or has rarely ever reached the pinnacle of its sport.

It’s why so many rooted for the Saints in Super Bowl XLIV and against the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. The same can be said for why so many people hate the New York Yankees, the Boston Celtics or the Los Angeles Lakers.

Yet when we look back on those Yankee teams that won five straight World Series from 1949 to 1953, and the Celtics teams that won eight straight from 1959 to 1966, we remember their greatness with — unless you’re a Red Sox or Lakers fan — a relatively positive feeling.

There has only been a handful of times in all of professional sports when a team or athlete has won five championships in a row. That kind of dominance doesn’t happen regularly. People said Johnson couldn’t or wouldn’t get three in a row, let alone five.

Johnson’s fifth championship puts him just two titles away from tying for most all-time with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, who each have seven championships — and Johnson hasn’t even been in the top level of NASCAR for 10 years. He’s won his five Cups in nine years. It took him just 327 starts to get there, while it took Earnhardt 390 and Petty 655.

As sports fans, no matter what the sport, we should at least pay lip service to those kinds of accomplishments.

Maybe I’m in the minority and what Johnson has done doesn’t really matter. Maybe NASCAR is just a hobby masquerading as a sport. But did you look into the eyes of Jimmie Johnson when they showed him on ESPN after the season finale? Or hear the sound bite from his in-car radio when the race finished? 

His jubilation at the end of the race made it evident that it does matter. 

What he did matters across all sports. It’s an accomplishment we likely won’t ever see happen in the NBA, MLB, NFL or NHL. Between free agency and the way the various drafts work, teams in stick-and-ball sports will more than likely always keep at least some level of parity.

Regardless of how people see him now, I believe he’ll get his due eventually — I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.

And those of us who saw it will be able to say we saw it happen: We saw history made.