The day is finally here!

So today is the day...when my social life comes to a screeching halt as every moment of my life until December becomes consumed with sports (I get a little break in December before it starts again in January) and I begin dreaming about calling volleyball stats, whether or not the copier works in the pressbox and whatever else my crazy mind comes up with while I sleep.

But it's also the day that college football starts around the nation and I'm pretty excited about this season. I've always been the optimist of the group, and I showed my true colors last year and made myself look like a fool when I proclaimed that Mississippi State would win six games. Boy was I ever wrong. I've never been one to be very pessimistic and I'm not going to start now, but I have realized that I do need to be realistic.

I do believe that Mississippi State will be better this year. I hope that we will win more than three games. We are healthier, bigger, faster and stronger this year and we have a whole lot more talent than we've had in the past year, with the exception of sweet, talented, country boy Jarius Norwood. However, I will not EVER say that we will beat LSU tomorrow. There is no way that Mississippi State will be the #2/#3 (depending on what poll you look at) team in the nation. There is absolutely no way. LSU is much, much more of everything that I just said about their team. Sure they lost Jamarcus Russell and about three more top draft picks last year but that doesn't mean that they don't have more talented just store up and ready to be let loose. And believe me, they will let it loose tonight on us.

So what I'm saying is, I just pray for points. Mississippi State has lost five of its last six to LSU by 30 points or more and I'm just hoping that we can lower the margin this year. I'm being realistic and just hoping that we score once or twice.

I work with an LSU grad and we've both talked about this for several weeks now. We've figured out that MSU will score at least once because against very good teams, we often score first and then never score again, but I'm hoping that we can get it in the endzone two or three times this year.

Tonight is also Samford's first game of the season. It happens to be at the same time as the Mississippi State game but we hope that they've fixed the cable in the pressbox so that we can keep tabs on the Mississippi State game while the Samford game is in progress.

Anyway, it's an exciting night for us because we have a new coach, Heisman winner Pat Sullivan, and he's done some great things with this football team in the nine months that he's been here. The morale on the team is better and I think these guys really believe in themselves now. He's unleashed a lot of talent in the younger guys that hadn't been used because the "seniority rules" code was in place before (or at least that's what I think). Now most of the starters tonight will be freshman or transfers. I'm really excited to see what they can do.

So, anyway, Go Bulldogs! (Mississippi State and Samford)