I had already been counting down the days until the start of Georgia’s football season — for the uninitiated, it’s only six days away — but I knew kickoff was nearly here when I got the phone call Saturday morning.

“WAAAAAR EAGLE!” the familiar voice shouted in my ear. Not exactly what an upstanding, civilized human being wants to hear at 8 o’clock in the morning.

The voice belonged to my friend, Jonesy. He’s an Auburn fan. He’s not the biggest Auburn fan I know. Just the loudest.

Jonesy was insufferable the year Cam Newton played for the Tigers. Or the War Eagles. Or whatever they are.

Of course, when my beloved Georgia Bulldogs whipped the Tigers or the War Eagles or whatever they are 45-7 last year in Athens, it was weeks before he’d take my calls. People in the Witness Protection Program are easier to find than Jonesy was.

But the beginnings of a new season bring new hope. At this time of year, everybody’s can dream that their team will go 12-0 and win the national championship. So I was hardly surprised that Jonesy had resurfaced, ready to start the good-natured taunting.

“Do you know what you get if you cross a pig and a Georgia Bulldog?” he asked.

It was an old joke. But I played along.

“No. What do you get?”

“Nothing,” he said. “There are some things a pig just ain’t gonna do.”

This is the best time of the year for those of us afflicted with college football obsession. The approach of football season makes grown men and women feel like kids at Christmas. We’re all anxious to see what we’re getting this season.

A lot of folks don’t understand the allure of college football. They don’t understand why my friends and I get to Athens at crack of dawn, hours before kickoff, for a day of tailgating. They don’t understand why we travel to such exotic locales as Starkville, Miss., or Columbia, S.C., to spend our fall weekend with the Dawgs.

A lot of folks think we’re crazy. And perhaps we are.

But Saturday marks the start of another season in Athens, and I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be. My parents took me to my first game when I was 5, the 1969 Georgia-Tulane game. I still have the ticket stub.

This is the 26th year I've had season tickets to Georgia games, and I haven't missed many games, home or away, in those years. Virtually everything in my life is scheduled around Georgia football in the fall.

My home and office are filled with Georgia memorabilia. I have a whole closet dedicated to red and black clothes. My car has a Bulldogs license plate. Glory, the black and white springer spaniel who lives at my house, was named for the Georgia fight song.

But I'm not even the biggest or craziest Georgia fan. One guy paints a Bulldog on top of his bald head. Another dresses up in tights and a cape and calls himself "Superdawg." A few years ago, a grown man spent the night in line to have his picture taken with Uga, the university's white English bulldog mascot.

Fall Saturdays in Athens are a glorious thing. A large group of friends, many of whom we haven’t seen since last season, will gather again. There will be enough food and drinks to feed a small army. And we’ll get to celebrate the traditions of college football that make it the greatest sport of all.

I had a nice chat with Jonesy. If Auburn has a bad year, he may go underground again. So I wished him luck this season. But I couldn’t let him go on such a positive note. I had to get my dig in.

“Hey, Jonesy, do you know how you tell a funeral at Auburn?”

He didn’t.

“The lead tractor has its lights on.”

Mitch Clarke is executive editor of The Times. His column appears Sundays. Read previous columns at gainesvilletimes.com/mitch.