Fall is the superior season

Picture this: it’s a fall Saturday morning. You woke up to the sounds of birds chirping, and you have a fresh cup of coffee in your hands. You step outside to grab your newspaper — hopefully it’s this one — and you feel the cool, crisp breeze of the autumn air hit your face. Life is good.

You know that you’re about to sit down and watch hours of college football — from an FCS school like Aberdeen Engineering School of the Mines marching into Bryant-Denny Stadium thinking they have a shot to cover a 49.5 spread, to ACC giants like UNC and Clemson duking it out over which Carolina is superior.

OK, I might have made that first school up for dramatic effect, but you understood the scenario, regardless of how hyperbolic it was. Was that example even that big of a stretch? With Ole Miss’s week one 76-0 win over Furman, a school I didn’t know existed until last week, I don’t believe I was exaggerating that much. Furman boasts an undergraduate enrollment of 2,278 students, compared to Ole Miss’s 23,780, meaning the former has less than 1/10 of the enrollment of the latter.

While I could go on a tangent about FCS schools playing way above their talent level, this column is about fall weather and how it’s perfect for football.

There is something about the crisp mornings, smell of burning leaves, and general come-down from summer that make fall not only the best season overall, but the best season for football, too.

I’ve spent autumns in four different states now, each with its own unique weather. For a good portion of my life, we designed our Halloween costumes to fit over our snow suits. Then I saw my first hurricane in September of 2017. Then I went back to the chilly air of Colorado. Finally, I’m here, with the threat of a hurricane still lingering, as it seemingly always does at this point in the year. I was used to October snow storms, not September hurricanes.

Autumn in Texas left something to be desired for me. It didn’t cool off nearly as much as I was used to. Through my five years of living there, I determined there are two seasons, and they often overlap: hot and construction. I never craved a hearty bowl of soup like I should when the autumn months hit. The seasonal depression was real for me — and it was still hot.

Here, though, there is reprieve. When I woke up on Saturday, after covering the Clinton football game for the Game of the Week, something hit me in my core. Something told me to check the weather, because it was going to be a great Saturday for college football. And it was.

When I opened the door to step outside for the first time that morning, it took me back to all of my early-morning Saturday youth and JV football games — when the air was a little too cold at sun up, but by the time you hit the field it was perfect, even with the morning dew still covering the grass like a blanket. That long bus ride home from a conference opponent, after lighting up the scoreboard in a 13-10 barn burner just hits different in the fall.

I don’t think football would feel the same if it were in the spring. Sure, various leagues have tried it. There was even a chance for some spring football during COVID. I’ll tune into the various renditions of the UFL, USFL, and whatever else league pops up and fizzles out in a couple years for some spring football. After all, it’s my favorite sport, and the more of it I consume, the happier I am.

But they still pale in comparison to September through December ball, though.

I cannot fully describe why autumn is perfect football, although I wish I could. Maybe it is that break from the summer weather. Maybe it’s confirmation bias that has been engrained in me my entire life. What I do know, however, is that when the leaves start changing, my Crock Pot gets fired up for some soup while I lounge around all weekend to watch the warriors of the gridiron smash into each other for four straight months, and that makes me happy.