See, this is what happens when 1) you have no cable, 2) you are recovering from Olympic fever 3) your baseball team has the best record in the league :  I had absolutely no idea, until about Wednesday, that this was the start of the college football season.  What did I need with college football?  I had points 2 and 3 to keep me occupied. 

Still, it was nice to see OU and OSU get wins yesterday (particularly OSU, since they don't have a good history with opening day road games).  Tulsa lost, which was only to be expected because they were playing Kansas -- and yes, as improved as they may be, they aren't major conference material yet.

This year, I'm going to adopt Rutgers as my Tri-State area college football representative.  I got a chance to see their game yesterday, and it was just fun to see how excited they got about winning.  Much like Tulsa, they are trying to rebound from a long period of terrible teams and have to fight for fan interest against two more established programs (although in this case, it's the NFL's Jets and Giants).  Plus, the youngest brother of one of my friends recently started there on a rowing scholarship.

Let's talk a little about point 3, now shall we?  My Cardinals are scary good this year.  And, at a time of year when we have the division title all sewn up and could just be coasting to the playoffs, we instead rattle off a nine game win streak, the longest of our season. More scary(good) Redbird facts:

The Cardinals are 79-2 when leading after 8 innings.

Until the second inning of today's game, the Cardinals had not trailed at any point in eight games.

Baseball Prospectus puts the Cardinals -- and only the Cardinals -- odds of being division champs and making the playoffs at 100%, with over three weeks of the season still to go.

Obviously, the Marlins and the Angels have proved in recent years that you don't have to be the best team going into the playoffs to win it all.  And people talk all the time about how this is "the year" for their team without it ever paying off.  But if there was ever a team that looked like they were having "the year," it's the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals.  And until the season's over, all other sports are of secondary importance in my apartment.