Column: American football, not soccer, is my ‘beautiful game’

Finally, football season is almost here!

And it can’t arrive soon enough. Oskie. Oskie. Oskie!

This is the best time of the year, folks, bar none. Enjoy. It doesn’t get any better! Football is one of humankind’s most awesome distractions.

Oops, that was over the top.

My tone was too breathless. I promise in future to keep my reportage on my favorite sport within bounds.

But, alas, I do love football. And opening weekend is always the coolest!

As the college season commences don’t allow yourself to miss a single moment because they’re all important. Everything in collegiate football matters. Every play. It all leads down that Yellow Brick Road to just beyond the lovely Jan. 1 floral procession on Colorado Boulevard.

And every year the campaign whooshes by like the Illinois Central’s “City of New Orleans.”

My major complaint is this: the season’s too short. No sooner does Rece Davis welcome us to a new college season than he’s playing “One Shining Moment” (or some such schlocky emotional trigger) and promising to see us next year when all the teams will be even better.

The season barely lasts a hundred days and then goes dormant for nine dark, bleak, interminable months, and I’ve got to make due with basketball, baseball, soccer, golf, tennis, sumo wrestling, Aussie rules football and reruns of “The Rifleman.”

It’s not fair.

Maybe that’s what makes football so grand. It’s ephemeral. It’s here and then gone like a delicate rose (bowl) petal.

I envy those lucky European soccer crazies (I’ve got a few in my family). They have their sport virtually all year long. No waiting for anything with bated breath.

The top five Euro leagues run August through May. By my calculation, that’s nearly 10 months! What about the remaining two months? They have a European championship, a plethora of tournaments, and every four years a World Cup. They also have innumerable “friendlies.” A “friendly,” I believe, isn’t a real game but more like a colossal pub-crawl.

It seems that every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year some form of “The Beautiful Game” is being displayed on some pitch somewhere. The sun never sets on soccer.

But, the average soccer fan pays a price for such a schedule. You win la liga (your league), and you have just eight weeks to savor it. No long Hot Stove League conversations.

What we American football fans get is a Disneyesque fireworks show, followed by … nothing. Poof. A dramatic build-up, a crazy-beyond-description grand finale (bowls and playoff games) with fireworks exploding all over the place. Then? We head for the parking lots.

Though I love all levels of American football, I’m particularly fond of the college game. That’s the world’s truly “Beautiful Game.”

I was in Germany on a college football weekend a few Octobers back and it felt, well, kinda weird. No marching bands, or big screen telecasts or oblong footballs anywhere. It was an almost parallel universe: blue skies, a snap of fall in the air, orange and red leaves ... no football. What?

Before this 2017-18 rollercoaster ride ends we’ll have encountered: The Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic; USC vs. Notre Dame; The Iron Bowl; The Ohio State University vs. The Team Up North; The Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl; The Rose Bowl; and The CFP National Championship Game.

Ah, the aroma of fried grease in the morning!

I savor the fact that our games begin at 9 a.m. on any given Saturday (Pacific time), and go until the wee hours (thank you Lord for the Hawaiian Archipelago!). That’s reason enough to move from Foxboro to Fountain Valley.

I roll out of bed on a Saturday morning and am satiated for the next 16 hours!

Enjoy this season while it lasts. When it all comes to a conclusion in January you, like myself, will have one less football season to anticipate.

As my mom used to say, “Jimmy, you’re wishing your life away.” Still, I can’t wait for this season to begin.

Bon appetit!

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.