More of us know the feeling than will ever be willing to admit it.

You walk into the school cafeteria, or on to the bus, or onto the playground at recess ... and there's nowhere for you to eat. Or sit. Or play. Everyone just keeps on doing whatever it was they were doing before you came in, and act if you're not even there. On the worst days that ostracization comes with the glares. The up-and-down judgmental eye scans that say, "You're not worthy to be with us today, so why don't you just go away."

Denny Hamlin on the predicament Brad Keselowski, above, faces: "It's tough to win a championship if nobody likes you. That is going to be a very, very tough task." Jerry Markland/Getty Images

Maybe you did something bad. Or maybe you didn't. Maybe there was rumor going around that was totally untrue. Or true. Maybe you simply wore a shirt that no one had seen before or had a piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe. But instead of asking where you bought it or politely pointing out the issue, everyone made a groupthink decision to use it as That Thing That Makes You Different and thusly less than them.

Or maybe you just kicked their butts on an exam. You ruined the grading curve. You got the part in the school play that they all wanted. You won homecoming king over the more popular kid. Or maybe you defended the nerd when the cool kids were picking on him in the courtyard.

They point. They whisper. They laugh. They push you to the margins. Just for doing something that they all decided -- without you -- was out of line.

So what do you do with that? Do you retreat to the nurse's office and act like you're sick so she will let you check out and go home? Do you compliantly go sit in the corner of the lunchroom by yourself like they want you to? Or do you file it all away to burn as fuel toward becoming valedictorian so you that they will have to sit and listen to your speech at graduation?

This is how it's been for Brad Keselowski ever since he first walked into the NASCAR Sprint Cup garage. It's a workplace that that might as well be named Bill France Senior High School. Where everyone knows everyone and has for a long time. It's a relatively small group of people, about the size of a high school. And just like any high school, there are cliques and social tiers. How team transporters are parked in the garage and driver motor coaches are parked in the infield might as well be how table seating is arranged in that cafeteria. It's a world that works together, eats together and even sleeps together. Couples date, they marry, they cheat and they fight. Some are traditional couples. Others are business couples.

And just like your school or your cul-de-sac, some people just never quite fit in. Like Brad Keselowski. It goes way back. Long before this year's postrace brawls at Texas and Charlotte, or his 2012 championship, or his storybook first win, or his big career breaks, first with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and then Roger Penske.

He's found himself in feuds with an all-star cast of Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon. As the whole world knows by now, any and all seem to have taken issue with his racing on the track, so much so that even when his moves weren't that egregious, everyone acts as if they were.

But the real rub in Brad vs. World has never been about rubbing race cars. It's been about Keselowski himself. Countless drivers have given him head-scratching looks when he's gotten downright philosophical during news conferences. They don't understand him. And everyone keeps waiting for him to stop being him, to work harder at finding and sliding neatly into his place on the pyramid. But it hasn't -- and won't -- happen.

"You're always going to be odd man out. You might get a hug every now and then, but you're not in the family." Those were the knowing words of Darrell Waltrip, who as a mouthy young newcomer rattled the 1970s status quo established by Richard Petty, Bobby Allison and Cale Yarborough.

On Tuesday's "Marty & McGee" podcast Waltrip talked about carving that closed door into an edge. "I did what I think a lot like what Keselowski does, I looked back and said, 'Where can I gain an advantage?' If everybody had the same race car and we're coming down to the last lap ... 'how do I beat these guys?' I could beat them by getting in their head. Making them aware of where I was, what am I doing, and what am I going to do? It's almost like Clint Eastwood, standing over that guy with the revolver. Have I fired five times or have I fired six? That's the doubt you want in a competitor's mind."

On Tuesday, Denny Hamlin pulled back the curtain on the subject and exposed a little of that doubt, saying, "You're just looking for someone to say, 'Man, I'm sorry I ruined your day. I screwed up. I apologize.' ... When that doesn't get said, then it immediately lights a fire in your stomach that he doesn't have any remorse. He's just like, 'Oh well, it's your problem.'"

On the surface, the message is that Keselowski has violated some sort of driver's code. But it's much more complicated than that. It's an exposed nerve with roots that run deeper than merely a debate over one driver's racing style.

There's a sea of change happening within NASCAR, a volatile recipe of a new postseason format mixed with an influx of young drivers, which inevitably leads to a pushing out of the older ones. Throw in a dash of social media, 24/7 sports talk radio, an impending new TV deal, and a cold war between team owners and the sanctioning body and it's a combustible dish, the kind that ends up with a bunkhouse stampede on pit road and drivers icing up fat lips on the flight home.

Keselowski, fair or unfair, has become the masthead for this unstoppable momentum into an unpredictable future. And here's where the true issue of his multifront fight can be found. It's the reason Kevin Harvick took it upon himself to push Keselowski in the back like a kid on an elementary school playground "and told him to go fight his own fight." The reason Gordon questioned how he'd ever won a championship. And the reason Hamlin launched a very personal Scud missile attack via Tuesday's media teleconference.

"If you ask me 'Do you want a championship trophy or do you want the respect of your peers?' I will take the respect from my peers because that trophy, they can't put in my casket," Hamlin said. "What's the fun of a NASCAR [championship] party that nobody shows up to?"

When Hamlin said it, it sounded familiar. It was.

"I guess no matter how many boos there are, you've gotta keep doing your deal. I think if I got all those boos, I'd have to rethink it."

Tim Richmond said that to the Charlotte Observer on May 17, 1987... about Dale Earnhardt ... after he won the Winston All-Star Race ... via the "Pass In The Grass."

But what does Keselowski have that Hamlin and Harvick do not? Or that Gordon hasn't had in nearly a decade and a half? The same thing Earnhardt won in '87 that Richmond did not. That trophy.

After winning the Sprint Cup title in 2012, Keselowski did listen to the critics and he did try to change his driving style the following season, a fact that both he and spotter Joey Meier admitted to this week. Guess what? He won just one race, as opposed to five in '12 and six in this year, and failed to make the Chase. He tried to care about what the others thought, and what happened? They whipped his tail on the racetrack.

So now he's back to the approach that got him here in the first place. The kind of desperation that clawed a kid from nowhere to the biggest stage in racing and once had him saying to me, lip nearly quivering, "I'm not sure you can do it like I've done it ever again, without money. Just winning and surviving. I feel like Indiana Jones pulling his hat out from under that big stone door just as it slammed shut behind me."

That's a man who will do whatever it takes to win. His way has worked, even if it means having nowhere to sit in the cafeteria. If it keeps working and he keeps winning, one day he can buy his own table.