In heaven I will walk through the pearly gates and be greeted with a widescreen TV equipped with the most complete college and pro football packages. I will bicker with Michael the Archangel about whether Ted Ginn Jr. or Reggie Bush is the better game-breaker and be happy.

I love a crisp fall weekend, so give me some shorts and a sweatshirt.

I love to look out my window and be treated to a cascade of leaves falling off the trees in the brilliant colors only autumn could create.

I feel this way not because of the scenery, but because of what it represents – that football is here.

College football comes next week with its big brother the NFL – a combination of red carpet debuts that can’t be beat. Tom Brady walking out of the tunnel for his first game of the year trumps anything Sarah Jessica Parker could cook up.

Here at Illinois, we are ready to be injected with early fall excitement. Illinois went from being Big Ten champions to being lulled into a coma in four short years. When the Midnight Madness celebration is our favorite football weekend, something needs to change.

Thank you Ron Zook!

Illinois is finally excited for football again. Though a championship run out of the loaded Big Ten Conference, given the current state of affairs at Memorial Stadium, would be wildly unprecedented, we were given a promise of future success. That’s all we wanted to hear and believe.

A strong early recruiting period has convinced fans that Illinois will climb out of the lower tier of the conference. A renewed fan enthusiasm has convinced me that games will be fun again.

Schematically, Zook brings a high-flying offense and an attacking defense – styles that should keep you in your seat. A week after Zook was hired as head coach, he took in a game at Assembly Hall and was shown evidence of the type of fans Illinois has to offer. With a little help from both parties, the team and fans alike, a rise to national prominence is possible.

Waking up early on a Saturday to tailgate and march with 75,000 of your friends is an opportunity too good to pass up in favor of a couple more hours of sleep. Put on your orange shirt and in three years, you will have earned the right to say, “I was there in the beginning.”

The beautiful part about the fall is that you have double the chances to succeed. If Saturday lets you down, brave a hang over and set the alarm for Sunday morning where the NFL comes to brighten the day. The NFL season is poetry in motion – Walt Whitman couldn’t do justice to Paul Tagliabues’ monster.

Even the preseason has a sound formula:

1st half – Enjoy the starters, cry about why your team didn’t fix their problems in the off-season.

3rd quarter – Predict stars of the future, laugh at people who have blundered and realize their NFL dream has slipped away.

4th quarter – Enjoy watching the guy that works at the neighborhood liquor store square off against your old babysitter.

But the preseason does tease, and you only get a taste. Like any good business or coed, it always leaves you wanting more. In the NFL’s case, soon we will get the whole shebang.

If you have read to this point, thank you, you are now smarter, and I urge you to continue to pick up my words of wisdom and analysis throughout the year.

You are officially welcomed to my wacky little world. Welcome to football, and enjoy.