This year’s opening piece is not last year’s piece, and could not be after this offseason. Down the rabbit hole we go.

That’s how Spencer Hall opens his college football season preview. It’s more or less a disclaimer, which is the only way we can talk about this college football season after that college football offseason. The game’s foundation has been rattled, but we watch anyway.

I went to a D.C. bar Saturday to watch a few games with a friend. There was a group of Miami fans who had made the trip north to see Monday’s game in College Park, Md. They wore their green and orange with pride. Nevin Shapiro couldn’t take that from them. There were other, larger groups, as well. Georgia fans decked out in red and belting out fight songs. Oklahoma State fans who would seem misplaced anywhere else in the city. Michigan fans gleefully undaunted by the fact that those great defensive plays were coming against Western Michigan.

College football is our European soccer, where everyone has a team that’s within easy driving distance. We root for teams in our own communities, for our alma maters. We have songs (“Hail to the Victors”) and slogans (“Roll Tide”) and T-shirts and bands and a sense of community that extends throughout the fan base, far and wide.

After this summer’s scandals, a friend told me he could no longer take college sports seriously. I wasn’t sure what to think. The system is broken, after all. But this weekend, everything felt right to me. Again.