Across the fruited plain, there is no finer month than October.
The tumultuous weather faced by many of us during the summer months is over, and evenings bring out more sweaters than bugs. The leaves are changing from green to deep red, gold or a soft yellow before they gently drop to the ground. The warm aroma of apple pie wafts from open kitchen windows. The young, or young at heart, throw footballs in the street once the cars have passed.
School is in full swing, even those strangely late-starting colleges on the quarter system. Work has taken on a renewed urgency now that everyone is back from vacation. Lovers walk tightly arm-in-arm under the crisp moonlight. Football still carries the excitement of a young season with the plot yet to unfold and baseball aims dramatically toward its climax.
No month is quite like October.
Here in California, this month is really like no other. To really understand the Golden State, you have to know that October is our best month for weather. So many people from out-of-state come here for their California Dream vacation early in the summer and end up with a full dose of what we call "June Gloom."
"Summer" doesn't really start here until after July 4. Then, for about two months, we have the same hot weather faced by everyone else, though not so humid.
October, though, is the best. It's still quite warm (well into the 90s at my place today) but is dry and sunny. Through most of the weekend, I saw one cloud. My children and I rode bicycles in the heat and the old man broke nary a sweat. The air was that dry. We had some drizzle the other day, and will probably get more soon. The big rains, if they bother to show up at all, usually wait until after Thanksgiving.
In Southern California, there are other months that rival October. There's always about two weeks of Indian Summer in January, for example. In Northern California, the 10th month on the calendar is unparalleled. That line about "the coldest winter ever spent was a summer in San Francisco" is true. Wait until September. Or even better, October, when you can get the best of both worlds as our hemisphere makes fall's transition.
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As a Westerner and college football fan, I hate college football's Bowl Championship Series and its provisions that amounted to restraint of trade for schools -- and in particular, the schools' fans and alumni -- who were judged unworthy of competing for a championship or even a big payday.
The BCS and it's forerunner were mid-1990s creations designed to create "a true national championship game" and at the same time enrich the coffers of athletic departments at the traditional powerhouse universities. Four existing bowl games were brought in under the BCS banner to host champions of the big-time conferences and a pair of so-called at-large teams, usually meaning Notre Dame and a Southeast Conference runner-up.
Well, things finally are changing, albeit slowly. The BCS has added a fifth game and loosened restrictions on Mountain West, WAC, MAC and Conference USA eligibility. Utah and Boise State both proved the value of inclusiveness.
Now, looking at the latest college football poll, Boston College is ranked fourth and South Florida is fifth. The latter, since you probably haven't heard of it other than a professor being linked to Middle East terror fundraising, is located in Tampa in what is actually the central portion of the state. Cal, known to the non-sports-oriented as UC-Berkeley, is third. THIRD. Home of tree-huggers and philosophy professors, not linebackers. The Beserkeley Bears. You've got to be kidding.
And there are other unusual teams knocking at the BCS door this year. Cincinnati, Connecticut, Kansas, Missouri and Hawaii are all non-powers who suddenly are undefeated early in America's greatest month. These aren't the schools the BCS was designed for.
Michigan and Notre Dame are not in the Top 25. Neither are Alabama or Nebraska. Nor are Miami or Penn State.
Last season, BCS games included those Boise State Broncos and Wake Forest, the Winston-Salem, N.C. school with the smallest enrollment in Division 1. This year, they might host a school with a direction in its name or named after a city.
Somewhere, whoever came up with the BCS is looking at the lastest rankings and shaking his head. That is a very good thing.
