Brad Keselowski wins his first champion -2012

The 28 year old Brad Keselowski, take championship away from 5x time Johnson on Sunday's race after something broke on his car. 

They put Brad Keselowski, the freshly-minted Sprint Cup champion, live on SportsCenter Sunday evening, and to commemorate the moment he brought along a ridiculously oversized, maybe 128-ounce glass of Miller Lite, one of his sponsors.

Throughout the nearly five-minute interview he took gulp after big gulp from the glass, right on camera for everyone at home to see. They were the kind of gulps that went beyond the proverbial sponsor plug. He looked exactly like a man who just needed a beer. Not surprisingly, the dehydrated, 155-pound Keselowski was quickly showing the effects.

How you feeling, he was asked.

"Pretty damn awesome," Keselowski shouted into his handheld microphone. "I've got a little buzz going. I've been drinking for a little bit. It's been one hell of a day."

And then he just beamed a toothy, boyish, All-American grin, part joy, part mischief, part earned satisfaction.

"I did have a big cup," he later joked.

There really was only one predictable thing about the post-race scene: Brad Keselowski wasn't going to win a title quietly.

"Make some noise," he shouted to the crowd behind him. "You're on SportsCenter."

Later he was asked what being a champion might entail.

The new face of NASCAR: Brad Keselowski.

"I always wanted to date a celebrity, just throwing that out there," he said with a laugh. "That would be pretty cool, don't you think?"

Anyone in particular?

"Not a Kardashian," he said.

Sunday was a transitional day for NASCAR, one that it hopes is looked back on as the start of the Keselowski era (or at least the generation he represents), not the time when a slew of critical sponsors bailed on auto racing.

Dodge is gone. Office Depot is gone. AFLAC and UPS are gone, corporate money walking away from this once white-hot sport. To say there were unsettled stomachs and thousand-yard stares from some team owners here at the Sprint Cup finale doesn't begin to describe it. It's a winter of uncertainty ahead.