For a long time, August was my favorite time of year. I’m sure part of it had to do with vacations on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; but even more than that, the vacations often coincided with the long-awaited reappearance of professional football.

(Warning: Much of this post may be lost on baseball fans.)

I realize every sports fan loves the start of their seasons. Every year, preseason brings its own love-hate cycle. When the camps open (the Jets have their rookies in already), your eyebrows raise as there’s actual news, the first time something’s actually happened since the draft. Then the preseason begins with the Hall of Fame game, in which the starters play for maybe a drive, maybe two drives. Then the backups go in, and the quality of play steadily declines. By the third quarter, Joe Neverheardofhim is flubbing the handoff to Jack Neverwillhearofhimagain, and the penalty flags are being thrown with the frequency of empty statements at a U.N. meeting.

But when it’s your team playing, preseason football suddenly changes. Strangely, you find yourself wondering if that seventh-round pick from East Nowhere State is going to get a slot on the practice squad. You care who your backup left guard is, how good your backup quarterback is, whether that running back who got 80 yards in the fourth quarter might actually be pretty good playing up against starting-quality defenses. You love the name of the rookie free agent defensive end who had three sacks, even though he’s not expected to make the team.

And you scan Sportscenter nightly, or NFL Live, for news from around the camps. Oooh, that guy had a knee injury in camp, he’ll miss the first half of the season. So-and-so looks good at quarterback for his new team. Can you believe that idiot rookie is still holding out? No way he’s ready to play the first week of the season.

And the way the NFL schedules the preseason, you can catch a game Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday, Monday and sometimes even Tuesday and Thursday nights. Even without any special Dish network package, you can catch a glimpse of just about every team. Of course, every year, you see plenty of the Cowboys.

The opening weekend has the Hall of Fame game and then some game overseas; for teams not in those games, the preseason is four weeks. Week Three is usually the most interesting; the starters get the most time, usually playing about the first half. By Week Four, everybody’s afraid of an injury; the starters get yanked early, and much of the game is played by guys who will be cut in a week anyway.

And it’s in those last two weeks you get tired of preseason football. You’ve seen unknown backups botch snaps, jump offsides, drop passes, run the wrong pattern, fumble, trip, miss tackles, and blow coverages. If there’s a touchdown scored, it’s usually because somebody on defense screwed up, not because somebody on offense made a great play. You get tired of this anonymous, less talented substitute. You want to see some football! You want the excitement of Opening Day, when everybody’s 0 and 0, where your team has as much shot at the Lombardi Trophy as anybody else, and it starts with winning that first game.

And so, in early September, when the regular season arrives, you’re deleriously happy, even though everyone else is depressed about the end of summer. Back to work, back to school, cooler weather - hey, big deal. It’s football season. You’ve got a once-a-week emotional rollercoaster — every game counts. The kickoff finally arrives, and you’re elated.

Of course, when you’re a Jets fan, the elation usually sinks by the end of the first quarter of the first game…