Sis. Boom. Yay, rah.

I know it's fall now, because school is in and the yellow buses are running and, on my morning walks around the neighborhood, I pass tiny people trudging along lugging backpacks the size of condos, like sherpas trudging up Everest.

I know it's fall because over by Arlington Elementary, the courtyard has sprouted bicycles and the car line fills the looping driveway.

I know it's fall, no matter what the faithless calendar says, because the lights have come up on high school football fields all over the area. Because there are heroes and goats and pain and elation beneath those lights. Because, last night, No. 1 Clemson wore out unranked Georgia Tech the way No. 1 teams are supposed to wear out unranked Georgia Techs, and now we have college football again.

Fall to me is college football. Always has been.

It's Saturday afternoons listening to Leroy Keyes run and Mike Phipps and Bob Griese throw and Jim Beirne and Bob Dillingham catch while my mom, a proud Purdue grad, swept and dusted. It's the residue of Saturday afternoon on Sunday morning, when I'd come home from church and turn on Fighting Irish Football Highlights, Lindsey Nelson moving on to further action in the third quarter as Notre Dame clubbed the life out of whatever sacrificial Pitt or Navy it played that week.

Saturday afternoons were Purdue and Notre Dame, and Indiana getting romped by Wisconsin or Michigan, because except for '67 the Hoosiers were always getting romped by someone in those days. Saturday afternoons were Oklahoma-Nebraska, Alabama-Auburn, USC-UCLA. They were James Street bringing Texas back against Arkansas, Purdue and IU fighting over a decrepit old bucket, Ohio State and Michigan punching each other in the face while Bo and Woody growled and gnashed their teeth on the sideline.

All of that turns 150 this year, and that brings back another milestone for me. The year was 1969, America was bleeding to death in Vietnam, and college football turned 100. Every college football team wore a special decal, a football with "100" printed inside it.

James Street wore it. Archie Manning down at Ole Miss wore it. Rex Kern at Ohio State wore it, Jade Butcher at Indiana wore it, Chuck Dicus at Arkansas and Jim Mandich at Michigan and Steve Owens at Oklahoma wore it.

The best game that year was Texas-Arkansas, No. 1 vs. No. 2 down in Fayetteville, Street and Steve Worster and Cotton Speyrer vs. Bill Montgomery and Bill Burnett and Dicus. Texas won, 15-14. President Nixon was there to see it, back in the day when presidents could sit right outside among the common folk.

And now it all starts again. Has started, actually.

Tomorrow I'll be in Lucas Oil Stadium, watching by alma mater, Ball State, take on Indiana. It will be an odd experience for a former sportswriter; I can't remember the last time I went to a Ball State football game I didn't cover. I will try to cheer, and I already know it won't feel right. I'll keep looking around for some SID to come charging down the aisle, braying that there's no cheering in the pressbox.

Of course, my Cardinals are probably going to get ball-peened. On the other hand, it's Indiana, so maybe not.

I can't say this for sure. But I have a feeling that, whatever the outcome, somewhere, on Sunday morning, something wondrous and eternal will happen.

Somewhere, Lindsey Nelson will be moving on to further action in the third quarter. You just know it.