The glory of fall

 October came in this weekend as mellow sunlight in a blue dome of sky, and a flannel-shirt breeze, and a farmer's market hawking pumpkins and squash and sourdough bread and the last peppers of the season.

It came in with  playoff baseball (Go, you White Sox!), and winter peeking around the corner when you surfed the remote and there were the by-god Chicago Blackhawks playing the by-god Buffalo Sabres, and college football -- the very voice of fall --  everywhere, everywhere, 

It was lying on the couch in the aforementioned flannel shirt, watching Minnesota beat Michigan at home for the first time in half a century, then seeing one of the oldest rivalry keepsakes in the game  (the Little Brown Jug) tossing on a sea of gold-and-maroon.

It was watching Missouri finally win a big one, flambe-ing No. 8 Florida a week after Florida flambe-d then No. 4 Ole Miss. It was Indiana over Rutgers big; Ohio State over Iowa big; Purdue beating Illinois in Champaign; Notre Dame winning in the rain in North Carolina.

Alabama crushed Mississippi State in Starkville, suggesting it might be ALABAMA! again. Air Force beat Navy in a service-academy game. And of course the alma mater, dear old Ball State, lost at home to Toledo, but at least put up a fight this time.

The glory of fall is all of that.

The glory of fall is 63 degrees that feels like 58, and maroon and orange and neon yellow in the trees, and the Minnesota student section becoming the Missouri student section becoming the student section of every football school in America celebrating its undiluted youth on a perfect afternoon.

"Wow. You sure red-lined the old Maudlin Meter with this one," you're saying now.

Yeah, well. Sometimes I just can't help myself.