You Know College Football Season Has Started When...

With August just a few days away, fans are starting to giddily piss their Depends at the prospect of another season of college football starting. Starting? Hell, I say it's started. Fall practice may be a few days away, kickoff weeks beyond that and the only scholar athletes being arrested right now are only around to lazily tug their balls half-awake as they drift through some horseshit summer class that will keep them eligible. With a greatly reduced number of coeds to date rape and vehicles to terrorize as they swerve home, the odds are ever in their favor...well, for a few more weeks, anyway.

But I'm here to tell you that college football is much more that what goes on between the sidelines and oddness and depravity are everywhere already. I give you the following examples as proof that the season is truly upon us. Click on the links and enjoy:

ALABAMA FANS ARE STILL BATSHIT

For those who still have Mrs. Jimmy "Superfly" Snooka fresh in their minds after stage diving OU fans at the Sugar Bowl, we are proud to let you know that the 'Bama fans are already dialed in for the 2014 season.

In a meticulously planned attack on former LSU rival, Zach Mettenberger, one 'Bama fan distracted Zach with a shout of "ROLL TIDE!" while another delivered the death blow from the blind side. Just kidding. Meticulously planned things don't end with the brain trust being tackled in the parking lot by the doormen after throwing such a weak sucker punch that the guy on the receiving end laughs it off and declines to press charges.

THIS ONE TIME? AT OHIO ST. BAND CAMP?...

OK, I know we already touched on this in the Flakes but has anyone read the article? A few nuggets:

"Assistant band director Michael Smith said he'd witnessed the underwear march -- though some wear pajamas or shorts while others go naked"

"An associate band director, Christopher Hoch, said he recalled a student having alcohol poisoning at the event some years ago."

"Witnesses also said rookie band members were given sexually explicit nicknames and told to perform 'tricks'related to them."

"members must swear secrecy oaths 'about objectionable traditions and customs,' including members marching across the field in their underwear"

In an unrelated story, the number of freshman applications to the Buckeye marching band received in the last 48 hours has quadrupled the school's previous record.

ESPN CAN STOP SUPPLYING RAINCOATS FOR ITS EMPLOYEES

After this season, Lou Holtz will have flecked his last spittle in Bristol. Some folks will miss this cheating, cross-eyed sonofabitch. Don't count me among them. Any season that will be his last can't start soon enough. And, yes, Lou, we know Notre Dame will run the table and win the 1st CFB Playoff.

BOB STOOPS SONS NICK SABAN. DECISIVELY. AGAIN.

Gratification must have been off the scale for a guy whose "Big Game Bob" nickname had been taking some hits, especially since he had said repeatedly that he didn't buy into the SEC myth and that Big 12 offenses were something they hadn't seen.

Well, after Coach Sabes made some comments a few days ago about last year's Sugar Bowl beatdown being a consolation game of sorts, Stoops was ready with a sawed-off shotgun full of responses:

"They didn't look like it was a consolation game on that first drive when they scored a touchdown and everyone thought they were going to rout us," the Oklahoma coach said. "I've been in plenty of those [non-national title games]. We've played in a bunch of national championship games, right? ... That's a good one.

"So that means I've got a built-in excuse the next time we don't play for a national championship?"

"After we won I didn't have to hear anybody after that," Stoops said. "That's the bottom line. Everybody had their computers loaded and their microphones loaded, and they had to delete it. That was it.

"It felt good; it was positive. Because I know everybody was ready to jump on us, on me in particular, on what I had to say, if we went the other way. That all had to be deleted. There's a little bit of validation in what I had to say. Fortunately it worked out in a positive way. I still believe in what I said."

Bob's already in mid-season form. Game, set & match, baby.

CONCLUSIONS?

Who needs fall practice, a kickoff or the ESPN preseason show to officially start 2014 college football? It may only be a few examples but that's more than enough proof to let everyone know that the season has already arrived.