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The best Saturday of the year

Saturday.

A day usually marked as the beginning of the weekend, ideal for birthday parties, bar mitzvah’s and any other celebration. There are 52 Saturdays in a year and all of them are met with relaxation and relief, but this Saturday, Aug, 30, is special.

This Saturday marks the “official” (thanks Steve Hemmelgarn) beginning of the college football season!

The best Saturday of the year!

The fields are painted and watered and ready to go, game uniforms are crisp clean and ready for the first grass stains of 2014, every team is undefeated and all national championship aspirations are alive, if even for just one week.

Back is College GameDay with Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso, ready for another year of predictions and the traditional headgear selections.

Returning are the newly minted and the last of the Bowl Champion Series champions, the Florida State Seminoles and Heisman winner Jameis Winston, along with talk of the repeat Heisman Trophy hype.

Speaking of Heisman Trophy candidates, Marshall quarterback Rakeem Cato returns for his senior year and will be looking to lead the Thundering Herd to a possible 12-0 season, while taking home college football’s most prestigious award.

While we are on the topic of quarterbacks, Golden Domer Everett Golson, 12-1 as a starter, will make his return to South Bend after being suspended last season. Golson will look to pick up where he left off in 2012, leading Notre Dame back to the national championship game.

Absent from the QB ranks in 2014 will be Alabama’s three-time national champion A.J. McCarron, who was a missed field goal away in the 2013 Iron Bowl from playing for his fourth title.

While we are talking about the Iron Bowl, the 2014 game should be filled to the brim with drama after Auburn snuffed out Alabama’s chances for a three-peat and an undefeated season with a 100-yard return by Tiger Chris Davis off of a missed 57-yard Alabama field goal.

I am definitely looking forward to seeing much more agile offensive linemen sprint on the field during field goal attempts for Alabama this year.

On top of all of that, 2014 marks the start of the College Football Playoff and the end of the much-maligned Bowl Championship Series.

College football fans finally will be getting the playoff we have wanted for a long time and also the debate about who gets left out at the end of the year by the selection committee.

Unfortunately, horrible uniform combinations also will be making their way onto the field again. We will see just how close Nike has come to making the Oregon Ducks look like actual ducks on the football field.

While this is nothing but a money grab, it is entertaining to watch football players try to act tough while looking like they belong in a Las Vegas show a la Cirque du Soleil.

Besides those two drawbacks, I really don’t see much not to get excited about, so let’s get this season underway!

Contact Joe Albright at jalbright@newsandsentinel.com

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