For the benefit of those Dawg Sports readers who are unfamiliar with my weblog's prior incarnation as Kyle on Football, I am counting down to college football season by republishing articles from my old site which many of you may not have seen before.
Below is a short piece originally posted on August 29, 2005, which outlined my preseason "to do" list:
Barring some unforeseen catastrophe, I will be in Sanford Stadium for my 19th consecutive home opener this Saturday night and there are preparations to be made in the scant few days remaining.
The team, undoubtedly, is ready, but I am not, so, in the hope of assisting all of you with getting your game faces on, I am posting my "to do" list for the week as a public service to the Bulldog Nation.
Here are the items I will need to check off of my list before heading up the road to the Classic City:
- Wash my lucky game-day attire.
- Watch "Munson's Greatest Calls" and "Munson's Greatest Calls Volume 2" back-to-back.
- Start getting into shape by practicing the remote-control flip-back, rehearsing my salsa-dipping maneuver with a bag of Tostitos Scoops, sitting immobile on the couch for extended periods, and shouting emphatic coaching critiques at my television.
- Turn the concrete bulldog on my back porch so that he is facing Athens.
- Take delivery of my 2005 Georgia football media guide. (I love the smell of a new media guide the way some people love the smell of a new car or Robert Duvall loved the smell of napalm in the morning. A new Georgia football media guide smells like . . . victory.)
- Cleanse the area in which I will watch televised football games by ridding the space of all reminders of opposing teams, just as Christopher Reeve put away all reminders of the present day in order to facilitate going back to meet Jane Seymour in "Somewhere in Time."
- Unpack that Steve Spurrier voodoo doll I've had in storage for the last couple or three years and stick some pins in it.
- Begin writing haikus about how much I hate Auburn.
- Place the Boise State logo at the bottom of my two-year-old's potty to assist with toilet training.
- Campaign for Joe Don Baker to be elected governor of Georgia in 2006, on the theory that, if he was willing to pardon Bo and Luke Duke after their car-crashing, moonshine-running shenanigans, surely he'd be willing to let me off the hook for anything untoward I might say to an opposing coach, player, or fan in the heat of the moment.
Some of those same rules still apply heading into 2006, of course, so bear them in mind and be on the lookout for future Kyle on Football classics as kickoff nears.
Go 'Dawgs!