It’s back and I’m happy.

Last Saturday, the football season opened with its first game, a contest between North Dakota State University and the University of Montana, a thriller that Montana won in the closing seconds of the game to upset the defending FCS champs.

That, however, was the preliminary. The main event begins this week with a series of games that began Thursday with Michigan vs. Utah and ends Monday with Ohio State and Virginia Tech and several others.

Since the end of the FBS title game in January, I’ve wandered in a desolate land of hockey, basketball and baseball. I never was a fan of hockey, although the Disney version with Goofey is hilarious, and haven’t been a fan of basketball for sometime. Baseball, well, I got tired of watching the same teams play week after week.

There was salvation in July with the start of the Canadian Football League, of which I am a fan, and the CFL has helped get me ready for the coming college season.

Remember, I said college season. I am not a fan of the NFL and am not now, nor have I ever been a fan of the New Orleans Ain’ts, er, Saints.

I haven’t watched a Super Bowl in 20 years, a feat of which I am most proud. It’s about like dropping Facebook, once you do it, you realize how much you didn’t need it.

I am a fan of college football, and LSU football in particular. I was hooked ever since my father took me to my first game in Tiger Stadium when I was 8 years old. That was 1958, and LSU was headed to its second national championship (actually, the first was 1908) and the backfield included a guy named Billy Cannon.

Since that first game, I’ve been a Tiger fan. Cut me and I bleed purple and gold. But over the years, I’ve also become a fan of college football as a whole (the SEC in particular), and enjoy my Saturdays watching the games in succession as they come on the tube. I’ve been known to wear out a remote switching from one game to another during time outs and halftimes.

I find the games enjoyable. For the most part, these are kids playing for the joy of the game.

Sure, there are players whose sole purpose is to get to the next level and who will act out when they make a good play (for once I want to see a guy score a touchdown and act like he’s been there before), but nowhere near the prima donnas you find in the NFL.

So Saturday, my day will start early.

To the annoyance of my wife and daughter, “Touchdown for LSU” and other LSU fight songs will begin in the morning, I’ll then have breakfast while watching ESPN’s College Game Day, get dressed in school colors in anticipation of the big game and get ready for a day of gridiron competition.

That is, if I can wrest one of the TVs from my wife and daughter.