Tee it up

 It's still Rangoon here in northeast Indiana, that charming part of late summer when you can break a sweat just thinking about breaking a sweat, and the outdoors feels like God's dryer vent. But, hey, college football!

Which begins again today, kinda-sorta, and the Blob cannot wait. It has never been shy about its preference for Saturdays in the fall (or today, in the dryer vent) over Sundays in the fall, on account of Sundays in the fall are mainly about fantasy football these days. The college game is just better in every way.

For one thing, it has Army-Navy, Harvard-Yale, Alabama-Auburn, Texas-Oklahoma.

The NFL has Jacksonville-Carolina.

College football has rivalries that go back to the halcyon days of Chester A. Arthur; pro football, with a few exceptions, has rivalries that go back to the halcyon days of George W. Bush. No one's stealing the other team's mascot in the days leading up to the Colts vs. the Titans; no one's sabotaging a rival's flip-card section during that venerable Bengals-Seahawks donnybrook. There's romance in Saturdays that doesn't exist in Sundays, even if the romance attaches to an ugly crockery jug or a beat-up old water bucket.

So ... yeah. I'll be watching today, even if there's not a whole lot to watch.

The big show doesn't begin until next weekend, but at least we've got Illinois-Nebraska this afternoon, speaking of rivalries that go back to, like, yesterday. We've got the 16th annual MEAC/SWAC Challenge, Alcorn State vs. North Carolina Central. And who doesn't want to check out Hawaii-UCLA or UConn-Fresno State?

Look. I know we're fast approaching a time when college football becomes one soulless corporate entity, virtually indistinguishable from the NFL. And it's no fun any more when you already know, or can reasonably assume, who's going to be in the College Football Playoff Final Four in five months.

Alabama Inc., Ohio State Inc., Clemson Inc., Oklahoma Inc. There's your four, same-old, same-old. Oh, maybe Notre Dame Inc. sneaks in there, or a rogue Georgia Inc. or LSU Inc. But there's not a whole lot of suspense that attaches to the CFP anymore.

And that's not why I like college football, anyway.

I like it for all those late nights driving back from South Bend after covering another four-hour Notre Dame game, a prime-time matchup muttering softly from the radio to keep me awake. Maybe it's Iowa, coming at me from WHO in Des Moines. Maybe it's some SEC game -- Arkansas vs. Ole Miss -- that goes seven overtimes, a marathon so long I get to watch the last hour on TV after I get home.

Or, like one night, maybe it's Bethune-Cookman vs. South Carolina State -- an HBCU game riding the quirky late-night airwaves from someplace down south.

Best times of the best time of my life, those drives home with the Hawkeyes or the Razorbacks or the Wildcats riding shotgun.

So, yeah. Tee it up, baby. Let's go.