"Fuh...Footbawl..?"

My favorite season of the yahr is h'yar.

From high school to pro, I love football. I was a great sandlot player in my day. I wasn't so good in high school, since they stuck me as a friggin' lineman, instead of using the speed and arm I had back then to better advantage. But eh.....y'all know what Bruce Springsteen sang about Glory Days, and now, I have the speed of a traffic jam.

So whatever my Glory Days, they have sooo passed me by. I'm content now to be a very satisfied spectator.

My high school alma mater has been competitive in Colorado 5A football of late, winning a state championship a few years ago. The college I attended...well, 'twas a lowly community college, and the only football there was intramural. But I follow the local colleges, though the two biggies -- CU and CSU -- haven't been BSCS*-caliber of late, and it isn't looking this year like that's going to change, at least as far as Sports Illustrated suggests in their pre-season NCAA polls.

Likewise for another team I follow from my home state -- the Iowa Hawkeyes.

And then there's the team that I parody-adopted as one that should be a BSCS* perennial: William & Mary. I'm not even sure they have a football team; William might have lost his equipment to Mary in divorce court, for all I know. But I digress.

Even if "my" teams aren't championship-quality, I don't care: it's football, and I lurve it.

Which brings me to the top of the heap...da Big Shoe...da prime time...da NFL. And it's gonna be a helluva season in Denver Bronco-land. What kind of "helluva" is highly speculative and wide open to interpretation.

For those who don't know or care: at the end of last season's lackluster finish (a pithy 7-9), the Bronco's head coach was suddenly fired/released/"left to pursue other options", etc. After a local media frenzy on who might replace Mike Shanahan, ownership selected a 32 year old football prodigy from the New England Patriots (their offensive coordinator the last few seasons), Josh McDaniels.

And Denver Bronco football in the off-season suddenly became a cross between the old Geraldo shows and the day time soap Days of Our Bite Me. The net result of which, the talented, mercurial, pouty, immature and possibly future (or not) Hall of Fame 2nd year Bronco QB was traded to Chicago (he just wanted to be traded), for a QB of...er...adequate to less ability, and a couple of draft choices.

Meantime, Bronco media, pundits and fans alike, debated back and forth over the vices and virtues of such machinations by either a future NFL coaching Hall of Famer, or a stumbling fumbling Punky Brewster who'd set back Bronco Nation a generation or more.

And of more recent idiocy, the possible future Hall of Fame wide receiver -- assuming he can stay out of jail and quit beating people up and other stupid sh** to get there -- has become petulant, and wants more money, or to be traded. Perhaps he thinks he needs more money for future bail. What a twit. Anyway, he practices, then he sits out, and he bitches like a Huffington blogger. That saga goes on.

A coworker made his thoughts known when he posted an '09 game schedule at work: with his natural optimism in full bloom, he put an "L" next to every Bronco game this season. So far, he's 1-0 in pre-season: after the Bronco's first exhibition game in San Fran -- against an equally-hapless 49ers team in '08 -- a whole lotta naysayers would have crowned him Cleo the Psychic.

Failing to remember, of course, that there used to be a psychic named Cleo, who was a four star fraud, but I digress again.

Last year, Denver had an up-'n-down offense (thanks in some part to a MASH unit for running backs), lackluster special teams, and a defense that was akin to a free spot on a bingo card. After the tumultuous off-season, Denver has a new coach, a load of new assistants, a ton of free agents, new draft picks, a new system....and a crapload of questions. Many of which the new coach won't answer, to the annoyance of some local sports writers.

I've seen what the worst of the "optimists" have predicted for Denver this year; and I've actually heard a couple of sports analysts suggest Denver's an 11-5 sleeper that'll sneak up on folks.

I think if Coach McDaniels coaxes an 8-8 season out of this team in the throes of full-blown rebuilding mode -- and so many of the "experts" don't want to call it that, but what the horsefeathers else CAN it be? -- it'll be a victory, and perhaps a precursor to better things to come.

But I don't care about all of the soap opera that going on at Dove Valley right now. I don't care that Bret Favre has crawled out of primoral retirement again to thoroughly piss off everyone in Green Bay. I don't care who the BSCS* seems to think is in the Top Ten (they're rarely right by season's end, anyway), or what pre-season polls in Colorado 5A say. What I do care about is, in the words of Sonny Cannon from the '74 version of The Longest Yard, "fuh..footbawl..?".

My favorite season of the yahr is h'yar.

*BullS**CollegeStandings, the thing the NCAA uses to come up with bowl game opponents, especially as it relates to which college team is #1. It's really called the BCS, but as a lot of fans will tell you, the extra "S" fits...