Cinderella goes barefoot

If the shoe fits it puts the universe right, sends sunlight to even the dimmest corners, makes put-upon chroniclers of the human experience buy a round for the house, because it makes the chronicling so much more fun. Not to say so much easier.

And so here last fall came NASCAR lifer Martin Truex Jr., scrounger of rides and middle-of-the-pack scuffler, putting on the glass slipper. It fit to the tune of eight victories and a Cup championship, and if that wasn't Cinderella enough he did it driving for an outfit called Furniture Row Racing, which was no one's idea of a heavyweight.

Until 2017, see, Furniture Row was a one-car team, and a scuffler itself. In its first 10 years fielding a Cup team either part-time or full-time, it won two races. It took 137 races for it to crack the winner's circle with Regan Smith in 2011. It took 148 more to do it again with Truex in 2015.

But the last two years it forged a working partnership with Gibbs and Toyota, and hammered out lucrative partnerships with 5-Hour Energy and Bass Pro Shops. And since the start of 2016, Truex has won 16 races carrying Furniture Row colors.

It was the ultimate little-guy-defies-the-odds story. Until it wasn't.

What happened, see, is the odds hit back, and now Furniture Row Racing is just another example of how hard it is to sustain success or even simple viability in motorsports these days. 5-Hour Energy pulled its sponsorship, and that was the end of the fairy tale. This week Furniture Row owner Barney Visser announced he was closing the doors on the race team at the end of this season, defending champion or no defending champion.

“This is not good for anybody," Visser said reluctantly. "The numbers just don’t add up. I would have to borrow money to continue as a competitive team and I’m not going to do that. This was obviously a painful decision to arrive at knowing how it will affect a number of quality and talented people. ... I feel that it’s only proper to make the decision at this time to allow all team members to start seeking employment for next year."

I would have to borrow money to continue as a competitive team ...

Think about that for a moment.

Think about what it means for NASCAR, with its diminished but still outsized presence on the American motorsports landscape, and a perspective still warped out of round by the outrageously unsustainable model of the mid-1990s to mid-2000s. Think about what it means especially heading into Brickyard weekend, the most visible barometer of NASCAR's descent from unassailable monolith to just another racing series with a healthy TV deal.

I would have to borrow money to continue as a competitive team ...

This is not the owner of Chico's Bail Bonds Racing saying this.

This is the owner of the defending Cup champion saying this.

If this Cinderella can't make a go of it in NASCAR these days, no other Cinderella has a ghost of a chance. Even the big boys -- the Gibbses, the Hendrickses, the Penskes, the Stewart-Haases -- have to scrounge and scuffle for sponsorship deals, all their power and connections notwithstanding. Furniture Row managed it because it had Gibbs preparing its cars for them and a couple of solid sponsors. But if one of those sponsors no longer finds it financially viable to put their name on even a Cup-winning car, how solid is any sponsorship for anyone?

Answer: Not very.

Which means everyone, even the big boys, will continue to do their own scrounging and scuffling.

Which means the business will continue to be a going concern, as in "going to be another roll of the dice this year."

Which means it's never going to be the sort of investment into which anyone sinks a fat chunk of change for the long haul.

Them's the facts, boys and girls. Them's always gonna be the facts.

And now it's on to Indy, where the organizers, desperate to stem the dwindling interest in an event that long ago lost its shine and novelty, decided to move the event from late July to early September. After almost 25 years, it seemed, they noticed the last weekend in July was usually hotter than the hinges of hell, and that's why people were staying away. Even though they hadn't until lately.

In any case, here's September, and here's Indy.

Where the forecast for this weekend is for temperatures in the 80s, with a chance of storms every day.

A chance of storms.

Mother Nature doesn't know the half of it.