Don't Ruin Opening Day

Here's how you know it's football season. SEC coaches can talk about grass without explaining why your starting linebacker was arrested. Your secondary is finally back from central booking, or as it's better known, Chris Henry fantasy camp. Yes, somewhere the sundresses have been distributed, Mark Mangino is borrowing the finest velour from George Costanza and a team of architects are putting the final touches on P.J. Hill's pregame snack.

College football is finally here.

It couldn't come at a better time. The dog days of baseball have languished so long that when the season started you could still get a tank of gas for less than the price of a house and Joe Paterno had just telegraphed his first recruit of the season. Endless months later, baseball is a slow crawl of 40-mile-per-hour pitches, participation ribbons and cranky parents. And that's just the Nationals.



And the NFL, which is marching on with its preseason cavalcade of players too bad to make the Dolphins' roster, has all the cliff-hanging drama of Jim Tressel's wardrobe. And even when the season starts, the league's games won't start carrying any real weight until long after you've burst the top button of your pants at Thanksgiving dinner. Unlike the college game, the NFL, with all due respect to the Super Bowl champion Giants and David Tyree's velcro-helmet catch, isn't a league of true upsets, except maybe Pacman Jones not getting arrested by the end of this sentence. Thirty-two teams similarly skilled teams fight it out with all the underlying differences of a Ford assembly line. And unlike the spread-offense dominated college game, the last time the NFL put in a new wrinkle, Bobby Bowden was just putting quill pen to parchment on his first contract at Florida State.

So let's not ruin this moment, the first of the finest 12-game season (not involving Foxy Boxing) known to mankind.

Just enjoy the sweet sacrifice of some MAC team that has all the chance of Nick Saban in a truth-telling contest getting swallowed by State U. And please, whatever you do, don't mention the BCS.

Don't even think it until December. Don't ruin the mood like cranking Danzig on a first date by calling on college football's three-letter rendering of a four-letter word. The BCS controversy is to college football enjoyment what kryptonite is to Superman, what near-beer is to John Daly, what monitored tests are to Florida State. Nothing sidetracks a season faster.

Last year, college football was the place where topsy slammed into turvy like Halle Berry behind the wheel of a Hummer, and the two pumped out chaotic week after week, from Appalachian State's Big Upset in the Big House to Pitt's Backyard Brawl shocker over West Virginia. Heck, even Notre Dame won a few games. Six No. 2 teams lost to unranked teams and the first two-loss team to play in a BCS title game also became the first two-loss team to win a BCS title game. Unpredictable didn't being to describe it. Tom Clancy novels are unpredictable. The weather is unpredictable. Last season in college football was Bob Knight's temper meets Allen Iverson's entourage on a Larry Eustachy bender.

A season of twists and turns did for the usually top-heavy world of college football what Hillary Clinton does for pantsuits, what Peruvian javelin thrower Leryn Franco did for whatever it is she does, and what Ed Orgeron did for just plain crazy.

But in a roller-coaster season, every week brought an avalanche of new stories about BCS implications and the impending failure to come. It was a little like reading Shakespeare with the greatest hits of Wham! playing in the background. Try and discuss Act III all you like, but "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is all that comes out.

So for once, let's enjoy the ride without wondering if there's a visit to the dentist at the end.

And maybe, just maybe, we should keep quiet because the BCS, for all its faults, actually works. Like New Coke, All-Star Game jerseys and Bill Belichick's wardrobe consultant, it may seem indefensible, but year after year, the BCS gets the nation's two best teams together even if it takes a last-second drive from the voters like last year's LSU leap.

After all, in the old world, the SEC champion would've been shuttled to the Sugar Bowl while the Big Ten champion would be sequestered in the Rose Bowl. So let's enjoy the games, make it to December and, have a little faith that, like most every year, we'll finish with the team that had the best season, and not simply the best four weeks of a playoff, on top.

So on this first day of the season, lay a wager on whether Duke will win its first ACC game since just after the Athens Olympics. Dust off the phrases "SEC speed" and "lack of institutional control." Grow a mustache and cruise in a scooter in honor of Dave Wannstedt ... or possibly your grandmother. But just enjoy it.

And whatever you do, don't mess this day up. Don't mention the BCS.