Ah. Can you feel it?

I’m not sure the air has changed or that Mother Nature is willing to comply just yet, but there is no doubt you can breath a little easier today.

Why?

Today is the start of fall.

I don’t care what it officially says on the calendar or what your Farmer’s Almanac says. Today is the day the fall starts. It’s the best day of the year.

Today is the day, when I lived a former life and was devoid of personal time and manners and non-sports talk, that I lived for. When I worked in sports, it was today that stood above the rest. Now that’s college sports, mind you. And it’s the reason that should determine why today is the greatest day on the calendar.

Go on a campus near you and find out.

Today’s the day the buzz hits. There is a completely different feel about the campus, whether school started today or last week. Whenever. The first day of the first football game week is always different. Special. It doesn’t feel like anything else you can describe, and it really can’t be described fully anyway.

The. Best. Day. Of. The. Year.

It’s not just a buzz, something in the air. You can see it, smell it, watch it.

The Pepsi trucks are around more. The people who have tents in the parking lot to tailgate, they come out to check their spot. Random fans, coming into town just for the game except that they’re five days early, they start showing up and snapping pictures in front of the TO statue at the front of the building, or of the stadium facade.

In the deed the glory.

Indeed.

This week, indeed. It’s so cool the feeling that it has and knowing that it’s over and yet not started. Camp is finished, the offseason is done. Nothing remains except game plans and then game day. The time waiting is over. The time for games has come.

It’s time to think about the grind that awaits and the anxiety of messing something up that might be seen by thousands of people. The idea of going to work on Saturdays for the next four months, more than half the time in the building that holds more people than all but two cities in the state. Understanding that days off are off-limits and that lunches are optional.

Ten years working at one of the “Cathedrals of College Football,” as The Sporting News termed it. Too cool. I’ve been a lot of other places that are touted as special, but they’re not anywhere near as awesome as Memorial Stadium. But even on those great days, those home football days, it’s never as good as today. When it all starts for real. When it all is still obtainable. Today is too cool.

I miss days like today.

(SIDENOTE: I’ll even kinda miss it when ESPN or ABC calls the press box and wants to talk to me about stats… during the game.  I’ll miss telling them that in case they hadn’t noticed, we have a live game going on that I’m supposed to be watching, but thanks for calling. Oh, and we’ll fix the GD stats when we get to it. Yeah, I’ll miss that too.)

UPDATE (6:23 p.m.): I got caught up in this a little too much and forgot what day it was. So here is your Worst Movie Scenes Ever weekly update. I didn’t realize cut-off limbs were so flexible.