Football Season Is Here, What Am I Going To Do?

As I sat on my sofa Thursday night watching the ESPN Goal Line channel, which bounces around between college football games, a strange realization struck me.

For the first time since I was a child, I don't have any football games to go to this fall.

To put that into perspective for you, I have been regularly been attending college football games every year since 1973. Since 1984, when I was a freshman at the University of Alabama, there have probably been fewer than 20 fall weekends total in which I have not attended a game.

Heck, when I was working in the newspaper business in Mississippi, there were more than a couple of Saturday's where I would go to see either Ole Miss or Mississippi State play in the morning and then make it to another game in the evening.

Sometimes I would even make it a triple weekend by heading to New Orleans on Sunday to catch the Saints. That doesn't even count all of the high school games I covered over the years all over Mississippi and Alabama.

Since first getting into college athletics in 1994, I have missed a total of two games. As a graduate assistant at Southern Miss I didn't make the cut for a trip to play Indiana in 1994, and in 2008 I missed Troy's game at Louisiana-Monroe the weekend that my father passed away.

That's it. I have a sheet of paper in a box or folder somewhere that has the year-by-year record of the teams I have worked with for the games I was in attendance for. Just for my career in athletics the total number of games is well north of 200.

I have been as far northeast at West Point and Buffalo and as far southeast as FIU. I have been to games at all eight FBS schools in Ohio (bonus points if you can name them all), but to just two in Texas. I have been as far west as San Jose State, Nevada and Boise State and southwest to New Mexico State.

I have covered the SEC with the exception of Kentucky and new member Texas A&M. I have been to Nebraska, Penn State, Michigan State and Illinois in the Big Ten (plus one in Ohio). I have been to Blacksburg, Va., for a Thursday night ESPN game where you could barely hear, and to Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge when the crowd was silenced.

I have been to bowl games too. To the Sugar Bowl more times that I can count. I have been to what was known as the Hall of Fame Bowl at the "giant sombrero" in Tampa and the Motor City Bowl at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich. I hit the now defunct Silicon Valley Classic and the Humanitarian Bowl. I've been to the GMAC Bowl before Godaddy.com got involved and I got to boo Ashley Simpson at the Orange Bowl.

So the realization that there will likely be no live college football games for me this fall hit home. I am sure there are other things that happen from late August until early December, but I have never experienced any of them.

Maybe that will change this fall. I am sure that, at some point, I'll find a way to sneak into a game, but I am not planning any grand road trips to do so.

It will be interesting to see how the non-football world lives, if only for one year.

Of course, I'll probably spend most Saturday's back on that sofa, watching college football. I may even tweet about it, so follow me @RHazel_SID.

Hatters To Scrimmage Again on Saturday

While I won't be going to any official games this weekend, I will be at the new Stetson Athletics Training Center on Saturday evening when the Hatters hold another scrimmage. It will be the third of six total this fall. Others are scheduled for October 6, October 20 and November 3.

The crowds for the first two scrimmages have been amazing and I expect we'll see more of the same Saturday night when the Hatters get started at 7 p.m.

The scrimmage we are all looking forward to is the last one, on November 3, which will be a part of the Stetson University Homecoming festivities. The scrimmage will be as close to an actual game as possible and will start at 2 p.m.

There are a lot of plans in the works for that event, and it should be exciting for all of the Stetson alums to get a chance to see the football program up close. Keep and eye open for more information on that even in the coming weeks.

Hatters Football History

If you have an interest in Stetson football history, I came across a blog that details a trip to Cuba by the 1920 Stetson team. While the results from the trip weren't great, the accounts of it are entertaining.

Click here to read it.