By Bob Markus

I think I'm becoming a junkie. No, not like Frankie Machine, the drug-addled hero of Nelson Algren's novel The Man With the Golden Arm. I don't crave heroin and I'd sooner eat brocolli than stick a needle in my arm. Still, I need my fix. Need it real bad. Here it is Sept. 1 and not a single college football game on TV yet. As far as I know there hasn't been one played yet. I know that back in the day college football used to be strictly an autumn sport. In fact, if you go way back, you'll find that football season didn't start until October. As late as 1982 a college football game in August was as rare as a Chicago Cubs World Series appearance.

Then came the kickoff classic, a game in late August in the New Jersey Meadowlands. I covered the inaugural game in 1983, when Nebraska blew out Penn State 44-6 on Aug. 29. The only thing I recall about that game is I had rented a black compact from Hertz and just as I wrapped up my story and went into the parking lot, the lights were turned off. Ever try finding a black car in an inky night, not even knowing on which side of the stadium you had parked it? The kickoff classic went on for several years, but the only other one of them I covered was the 1986 game when Alabama beat Ohio State 16-10. I have two memories of that one. The first was that I went to Tuscaloosa a few days before the game, less to advance it than to do a feature on quarterback Mike Shula, Don's son. I had made arrangements to talk to head coach Ray Perkins as well as young Mr. Shula, but the day I arrived one of the Crimson Tide players died on the practice field. Under the circumstances, I expected Perkins, not known as a huge fan of the media, anyway, to cancel the appointment. But he went through with it and later, when I saw him in an elevator in the headquarters hotel in New Jersey, he even said "hello." The other thing I remember is that on the morning of the game I awoke with a raging fever. The Alabama medical staff was kind enough to give me some medicine, but it didn't help much. By the time I got to South Carolina for my next assignment, the fever had subsided, but my mouth was so inflamed I couldn't eat. I finally went to a clinic on the afternoon of the Saturday night game and was given a potion which numbed my lips for about 10 minutes, just long enough to choke down a sandwich before going to the game.

The idea of playing football in August seemed to catch on. In 2002 both Nebraska and Arizona State played two games in August, the first against each other on Aug.24. In 1997 Northwestern and Oklahoma played as early as Aug.23. College football was always one of my favorite assignments when I was covering sports for the Chicago Tribune and remains one of my favorites in retirement. I was so hungry for football of the non-NFL variety that I even watched a high school game last Saturday. Of course, it featured St. Thomas Aquinas of Fort Lauderdale, my current residence, and the Raiders, widely acknowledged the No. 1 prep team in America, looked as if they could have taken on a Division one college team in the course of their 52-7 blowout of Upper Arlington (Ohio). Usually on that last Saturday in August there are at least a few college games played, and one or two of them is likely to be an intriguing match-up. Not this year. Mercifully, I have only two more days to wait before getting that nerve calming fix. There are five games scheduled for Thursday night and two of them are intriguing matchups--South Carolina at North Carolina State and, even yummier, Oregon at Boise State. The Ducks, Sports Illustrated's choice as the No. 11 team in the country are 4 point underdogs to Boise State, SI's No.9 team. That game is going to test my dedication to the sport because it starts at 10:15 Estern time and probably won't be over until at least 1:30 a.m. I usually set my alarm for 6 a.m. on Friday to make my regular tee time. Something's got to give .

That's a pretty good warmup act for Saturday, when most of the major teams go into action. There are several early showdown games scheduled for that day and although Alabama vs. Virginia Tech is getting most of the hype it isn't the only premium attraction Saturday. Worth watching: Georgia at Oklahoma State, BYU at Oklahoma, and Illinois-Missouri, for personal reasons, in their annual St. Louis showdown. The Oklahoma-BYU game is particularly intriguing because it features Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford of Oklahoma against the latest in a long line of BYU gunslingers, Max Hall. Should Hall win this duel in the sun, he would become an instant Heisman contender, even in a year when all three finalists--Bradford, Texas' Colt McCoy and former Heisman winner Tim Tebow of Florida--are back to try again.

My love affair with college football began in the war years--that's World War II if you're keeping score--when I'd listen to a game on the radio every Saturday afternoon, then go next door to Maisel's Drug Store for the early edition of the Sunday papers, where I could read about all the Big Ten games. The stories were all told in play-by-play fashion and it wasn't until I started working for The Tribune myself that I came to understand that what I was reading was not the final story, but "running" matter which later would be "subbed out" by the writer covering the game. The first college game I ever saw in person was in 1947, when I was 13. Somebody had given my father a single ticket to the Notre Dame-Northwestern game at Dyche stadium. I took the train by myself to the Central Street station and followed the crowd to the Stadium. I don't remember the details, but I remember the score, Notre Dame 26; Northwestern 19. That was the closest game Notre Dame played in a perfect 9-0 season.

The first college game I covered was Purdue's 31-0 drubbing of Missouri to start the 1954 season. I was a student at Missouri, covering football for The Missourian, the daily paper put out by the school's journalism students. The two things that stand out in my memory were, first, that Len Dawson, in his college debut, threw four touchdown passes to Lamar Lundy, also making his first start and, second, the Friday night press party. In that era it was de riguer for the host school to have a press "smoker," featuring food and drink and, usually, an appearance by both coaches. Purdue's "smoker" was by far the best in the Big Ten. It was held at that time in a downtown hotel and featured a steak dinner and all you could drink--cocktails before, wine during, and brandy afterward. There were perhaps 12 of us sitting at a long table and I was awe struck at being in the company of such famous writers as Dave Condon of The Tribune and Bob Broeg of St. Louis. They all treated me as one of the gang and I was spellbound by the stories they told. Later, when I was covering college football for The Tribune I remember vividly two other press parties involving Purdue Coach Jack Mollenkopf. At that time the Tribune used to publish on Friday a list of the writers who would be covering The Big Ten and Notre Dame games on Saturday. It was called: They'll Be There. One time when I was going to cover a Purdue game my flight to Lafayette was cancelled and we were all piled into a bus and driven to West Lafayette. As a result, the press party was in full swing when I arrived, and there to greet me, a gin and tonic in hand, was Mollenkopf, who said:"I read in the paper that you were coming down. I've been waiting for you. Here, I bet you can use this." A few years later at a "smoker" at Notre Dame, I sat at Mollenkopf's table for dinner. The two teams were ranked 1 and 2 in the polls and there was a great deal of anticipation, but Mollenkopf scoffed: "I don't know why everyone's making such a big deal of this game. We're going to win tomorrow and at the end of the year Notre Dame's going to be ranked ahead of us." He was right on both counts.

Part of the joy of covering college football was in arriving early on a Saturday morning and walking around the campus. I always believed that Indiana and Michigan State had the two prettiest campuses in the Big Ten, because, believe it or not, although I lived less than five miles away from it I never saw the Northwestern campus until after I retired. Having seen it often since then I have to revise my list. I've seen dozens and dozens of college campuses and, with the exception of Pepperdine, which overlooks the Malibu coast, there is no more beautiful college campus than Northwestern's.

Of course, I'll never see another college football game from the same perspective, but I'll never lose interest in it, either. Let the games begin.