Meanwhile, in NASCAR ...

They ran the oldest race in NASCAR last night on one of the most iconic racetracks in the sport -- a throwback, really, to the days when not every layout was plumb-bob symmetrical -- and a young hotshoe named Erik Jones won it. Led the last 85 laps while the best wheel man in the game, Kyle Busch, stalked him relentlessly. It was Jones' second career Cup win, both in places that ring to the touch.

His first win was at Daytona. His second, last night, was  at egg-shaped Darlington, in the Southern 500, which was first run 69 years ago.

It is, in a sport whose roots are Dixie to the bone, the most Dixie of all NASCAR events. But it's also an event whose results I had to go looking for, because like so much else in NASCAR it's a very off-off-Broadway production these days.

NBC, for instance, didn't see fit on a holiday evening to air it on the main feed, instead relegating it to NBCSN. And ESPN, which has long behaved as if NASCAR were the only motorsports series in existence, didn't even put it on its web front.

The Colts signing journeyman quarterback Brian Hoyer, that was there. The Jets hiring Hines Ward as an assistant coach was there. But nary a word about one of the crown jewels of the NASCAR schedule. I had to go to the NASCAR page to find out who won.

What this tells us is something we already knew, of course: NASCAR's long and steady eclipse continues. Except for the Daytona 500, it's all just dead air now to most of America. And if last night didn't again drive home that point, the weekend upcoming will.

That's when NASCAR returns to Indianapolis for the Brickyard 400, once a crown jewel itself but now Just Another Boring NASCAR Race. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway might be the most famous race course in the world, but it's a sleep aid on slicks when the stock cars come to town. The novelty of NASCAR coming to Indy has long since worn off, and now -- largely because of the Speedway's flat, square-jawed layout -- it's a 160-lap, 640-left-turn Tournament of Roses parade.

And the interest has dwindled steadily as a result. Oh, IMS and NASCAR have tried mightily to paper over the fact that the race stinks, plastering the internet and the city with ads for what they're calling (this year) the Big Machine Vodka 400 At The Brickyard Presented By Florida-Georgia Line. They even moved it from late July to early September, desperately concluding the baking heat of mid-summer in Indiana was keeping folks away.

Somewhere inside they had to realize what a crock that was. It was, after all, just as hot back in the early days of the Brickyard, and that didn't keep 250,000 sweaty folks from swarming the grounds anyway. Those numbers are down to 50,000 or fewer these days -- and mostly that's because of the racing, about which IMS and NASCAR can do very little. Indy is what it is, and everyone has figured that out.

And NASCAR, in 2019, is what it is.