In its typically quirky way, the college football season begins this week.
Late-night Friday.
From Australia.
OK, so maybe you haven't been sitting around all summer waiting on ESPN's coverage of California vs. Hawaii from the Olympic Stadium in Sydney, but there's no denying the tiny spark that comes with the news.
For Miami fans, that goes double.
The excitement over Mark Richt's return to his alma mater to coach the Hurricanes can only grow and grow until something happens to remind everybody that there might actually be a few UM losses this season.
Sunday's release of the preseason AP poll could have been that slap in the face, but I'm guessing that Miami's failure to gain a spot in the initial Top 25 won't be enough to rock anyone's confidence around here.
There is, however, one challenging note for Richt in all of this.
AP voters nationwide have slotted Georgia at No. 18 in the preseason poll under Kirby Smart, who never has been a head coach at any level. They're saying in effect that the team will immediately and perhaps automatically improve without Richt, who finished out of the Top 25 in the last of his 15 seasons as the Bulldogs coach.
That's an overreaction to the notion that Georgia needed a new voice, a fresh momentum, and it doesn't give proper credit to Richt's career winning percentage of .740.
Included on the list of major names that can't match that lofty number are Les Miles (.725), Steve Spurrier (.718), Vince Dooley (.715), Ara Parseghian (.710), Jimmy Johnson (.699) and Frank Beamer (.662).
Might Smart have a great run with the Bulldogs? Sure, it's possible. He was a highly successful assistant to Nick Saban on the Alabama national championship train, not to mention ringing the bell with boosters as a former All-SEC defensive back at Georgia.
Compare this, however, with the expectations that Richt stirred when he first arrived at Georgia for the 2001 season.
We're talking about a hot young assistant, the Kirby Smart of his day. Richt worked 14 years as one of Bobby Bowden's top assistants at Florida State. He was a major influence on two national championship teams there. Richt was the quarterbacks coach during Charlie Ward's Heisman Trophy season of 1993. In 1999, he was the offensive coordinator and playcaller for the unbeaten, wire-to-wire champion Seminoles, and in 2000 he worked with another Heisman winner, Chris Weinke.
All of that made Richt an obvious choice for Georgia, but he had no head coaching experience and was following a veteran named Jim Donnan, who went 40-19 as Bulldogs coach. AP voters accordingly allowed for a transition period for Richt and his new team, leaving Georgia just outside the preseason Top 25 that year.
Bottom line, Richt had to earn a national consensus of respect for his ability to perform as a head coach in 2001, even at a ready-made SEC program like Georgia, and it seems he is going to have to earn it again in 2016, at least when it comes to making a major and immediate difference at Miami.
That's not entirely fair to a guy with his record and with a quarterback like Brad Kaaya running his huddle, but Richt won't gripe about it. With the Hurricanes' season opener against Florida A&M coming up Sept. 3, he won't fret about arbitrary placements in a guesswork preseason poll, either.
"To me, there's pressure and there's stress," Richt said at ACC media days this summer. "There's pressure in this job of head coach. There's certain deadlines you have to meet, certain things you are responsible for. A lot of things have to happen.
"I think whether you stress out about it is up to you ... I focus more on the process of doing things right. I feel like the results will come."
Hard to argue with the results he always has shown, an average of 9.6 wins per season.
Tough to imagine that AP voters won't be showing him more respect as the season goes on.
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