Game Week! GAME EFFING WEEK!!!

You. You, there. Yes, you. The guy with too many burnt orange t-shirts that don't fit so well anymore. Stupid dryer. The guy who just finished dropping off spawn and spawnette for their first day of Nth grade at Traffic Jam ISD.

You forgot the Elmer's glue. No, wait, I meant that other thing. It was, um ...

GAME WEEK!!!

There is a football game. College. In Austin. This Saturday. That counts. Yes, it's against a tomato can, but it counts.

No, wait. You need an attitude adjuster. Play this in the background while you read, and try not to set anything on fire.

It's OK, I'll wait for it to take effect.

Much better. I was beginning to worry about you. If you truly felt what is upon you (no, not The Eyes, relax), truly felt like a man who has passed the scorching sands, left the pigskin-starved wastes of summer behind you, felt delivered into the season of milk and honey, or at least BBQ and bourbon, survived the savage reign of tyrants both Tick and Tock, and come within sight of an "AT DKR" on your calendar (the one from the tool shed with all the tits, the one that started that workplace lawsuit) you would be drinking now.

Stop. I didn't say "should," just "would."

There should be a spring in your step, a twinkle in your eye, an extra sense of vacancy about you in staff meetings. The extra bandwidth you're sucking down at work for YouTube and flamewars should make your SysAdmin think you're a virus. You should start carving a calorie sink out of your diet now, and you should have started hydrating last week.

For Saturday. Holy Saturday. Is nigh.

Yes, it's New Mexico. State, I think. Hard to get excited? Hardly. Because, according to my utterly non-scientific metric of things I think I remember after drinking heavily at football games for a quarter century, home openers against prefab roadkill are a very good indicator of how the season is going to go.

There are two kinds of seasons: those that open with Pygmies, crushed beneath the wheels of heedless chariots on a Saturday, and those that open with a coordinator explaining that 'they surprised us with a bunch of junk defenses which is why the offense didn't really get going until late in the 2nd quarter,' in The Statesman, on a Sunday. Right next to Kirk Bohls being pithy about something he predicted, sometime.

There is no middle ground. Run riot and roughshod, or run home with your tail between your legs. And that's just the tailgaters.

It's a "night" game, too, which means the sun will set about ninety minutes after kickoff. But still, you will have all day to summon your inner Hun through the careful application of magic potions and incantations. Crappy Lite. "Texas" "FIGHT." This is the crucible that tests relationships. Some will fail. Forget her, she wasn't fit to bring your little Longhorns into the world. You really don't know who you were bear hugging in Bellmont's vomitorium at timetostartdrikingagain:30. They were just wearing the right color, and anyway WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

And then: desert. You'll come back here to Barking Carnival on Sunday Monday afternoon, -ish, to attach a feedbag of stats and snark to your snout and gorge. How doth the inside zone? Linebackers, wither your gaps?

And then, I'd like to be able to write something like, "and then start it all again for next week!" But: no. There's a white knuckle affair up in Provo, then we get two more home games in mid-September. After that, it's a long haul to November. So, unless you're some kind of jet setter or a road warrior, be sure and milk this one for all it's worth. After all, one of us could step in front of a bus or eat a ghost chile on a dare or something. This is all we get.