T.G.I.F.S.

Thank Goodness It’s Football Season.

If you’re so psyched about the new season that you catch yourself singing “Are You Ready For Some Football?” in the privacy of your pickup, you are not alone.

The AT&T Cotton Bowl announced last week that the Jan. 6, 2012, game between the Big 12 and SEC champions is already a sellout. Four months before kickoff and three months before we’ll have a clue about which teams will play, all 71,815 seats in Cowboys Stadium are spoken for.

If you buy a Cotton Bowl ticket before your team suits up for its first game, Bubba, you might be an optimist.

There are lots of reasons we get so excited about the start of football season.

One reason is that a new season brings fresh material for our other favorite fall pastimes — prognostication and pontification.

We all like to think we have an eye for talent and a gift for forecasting football matchups. That’s why we devour gridiron information leading up to the season.

For many of us here in Central Texas, the August arrivals of the Trib’s football section and Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine are akin to the simultaneous publication of Who’s Who and the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog.

They offer reams of stats, analyses and player profiles to argue about as we feverishly tick off the days till the season opener.

Another reason we love football so much is that it makes reality TV look tame. A sportscast during football season has more tales of conflict than “The Jerry Springer Show.” When it comes to the dramatic adventures of dysfunctional roommates, “Big Brother” can’t hold a candle to the Big 12.

Donald Trump should apprentice himself to a University of Miami booster to learn about incentivizing high-priced talent.

And the Bachelorette could learn a thing or two from the way a blue-chip running back handles his suitors during recruiting season.

Music is another big draw for football — especially at the high school and college levels.

The buh-RAHs of the bass horns and the thuh-da-dumps of the snare drums are as seductive to the football fan as an aria to an opera aficionado. The fact that Janie Sue’s piccolo is out of tune and the entire woodwind section is marching out of step is hardly noticed, if at all.

What makes us stand and applaud is not the artistic excellence of the Bitin’ Chiggers Marching Band but the youthful exuberance that’s transplanted into our weary beings.

The change of seasons is another attraction. Because football season is synonymous with fall, there’s sweet serendipity to the arrival of Texas’ favorite sport and the departure of our annual meteorological misery — summer.

Yes, we’re still at least a month away from our first real cool snap. Yes, the temperature at the Baylor-TCU kickoff Friday night was 100 degrees. And yes, Texans will wear short sleeves more often than sweaters during the course of the season.

Despite all that, football’s arrival assures us there’s relief over the horizon. The team schedule tucked securely into our wallet assures us that it’s fall, by golly, whether it feels like it or not. It’s irrefutable evidence that even the worst summer in recorded Texas history won’t last forever.

These are all things to love about football season, to be sure.

But its main attraction is that it resonates so deeply with that quality of the human psyche that led to an early run on Cotton Bowl tickets — optimism.

The beautiful thing about the season opener is that for one precious moment, no matter what the experts may say about our prospects, our team is tied for the lead.

For that fleeting instant every fan of every team — Bears and Horned Frogs, Longhorns and Aggies, Sooners and Red Raiders, the Plantersville Warts and the Farmerton Fightin’ Fire Ants — is rooting for a contender.

In that moment before the thump of kickoff, there is hope in the air on both sides of every stadium in every town that tees up a football.

Hope fuels devotion, and devotion feeds faith — the faith to buy bowl tickets four months early. Or simply to pull out the pom-poms for yet another year.

How could you not look forward to that?

Donnis Baggett is publisher and editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald . His email address is dbaggett@wacotrib.com. His mailing address is P.O. Box 2588, Waco, Texas, 76702-2588.