Can you hear that?

That harmonious clapping of the players at the end of a drill; the unrelenting, high-pitched shriek of coaches’ whistles; the sound of 92,000-plus screaming maniacs that inhabit Sanford Stadium for six or seven Saturdays each year.

I can, well almost.

With EA Sports’ release of its NCAA Football 09 on Tuesday, my anticipation toward the upcoming football season has intensified 100-fold.

It was almost as if the football gods knew we were about to find the nearest state hospital when they gave us a reprieve from our football-less summer when the game was released.

And as if I needed any more reason to be excited about the upcoming season, Georgia is expected to be ranked in the top-three nationally and is a legitimate contender to win a championship.

Did I die and go to football heaven?

After spending the last two years in the football wastelands that are Tempe and Tucson, Ariz., respectively, and being deprived of the ability to watch games with people who legitimately care and whose passion is exceeded only by their expectation, I have journeyed back east in hopes of fulfilling my desire to watch real football. Not that sissy stuff in the Pacific-10, but hard-nosed, knock-you-in-the-mouth Southeastern Conference – where the last two champions and the last Heisman Trophy winner both reside.

This upcoming week, the first sign of the season’s impending arrival is the SEC Football Media Days, being held in Hoover, Ala., beginning July 23. It is where coaches and player from the toughest conference in the country will congregate for some pre-season quotes and photo ops, but where there will certainly be no love lost.

Every time I pass Sanford Stadium, I am taunted by the lush green patch of earth surrounded by neatly trimmed English pivet hedges and the imposing multiple levels of Sanford Stadium.

It seems the only time a football player is in the news these days, it is for doing something bad, but in 44 days and counting, all the negative news of the offseason will be put in the dungeon of our minds as we congregate in the southern cathedral of football as we witness the unveiling of Uga VII, and as we are able to watch opening day.

Nothing feels better than enjoying a crisp Saturday afternoon with 92,000 of your closest friends, singing “Glory, Glory to Old Georgia” a couple hundred times, watching Knowshon Moreno break a defender’s ankles or seeing Matthew Stafford unleash a missile from the cannon that is his right arm.

I can hear it. Can you?

- Michael Fitzpatrick is the sports editor at The Red & Black