The wildest offseason of college football in my lifetime is finally coming to an end and we're just 29 days from honest-to-goodness football when the season opens on September 2. The possibilities for a massive realignment were so alive that the actual results--Nebraska to the Big Ten, with Colorado and Utah going to the Pac-10--actually seem modest rather than the significant changes they really are. For if nothing else, the era of the super conference, in development since 1992 is now a full-fledged reality and college football has a new day to serve as the celebration of the sport.

New Year's Day was once the defining day of college football. As I lay out in my forthcoming book The Last New Year's, from 1976-1993, January 1 was the day you could turn on the television and see all the best teams in action. Thereafter, the conferences and bowls began working to coordinate a process that would pair up the best two teams in a "college Super Bowl", a process that has led us to the creation of the BCS National Championship Game and spreading the major bowls out to different days.

The arrival of the super conference, with its postseason championship game has moved the sport's feature date up a month. Now it will be the first Saturday of December that demands football fans drop everything and spend a day in front of the tube with the nation's best. We already had the SEC, Big 12, ACC and Conference USA playing title games. Now we have the Big Ten and Pac-10 added to that list. If the Big 12 gets permission to continue playing a championship game with only ten teams (NCAA rules require twelve) every conference will settle its crown on the same day.

As a cutting-edge traditionalist--who generally is sympathetic to keeping things as they are, but open to change that genuinely looks constructive, as opposed to being change for change's sake or to react to short-term problems--this new landscape has taken some time getting used to, but I have to say I like it now as much as ever. Last year was a big selling point. By a stroke of good fortune, the Big East & Pac-10 saw their championships come down to head-to-head showdowns the first weekend in December. So we got an advance taste of how much fun this will be once it's established formally. It started on Thursday night when Oregon beat Oregon State in a thriller. Then Cincinnati rallied to stun Pitt in an epic finish. East Carolina beat Houston. The stage was set for the late afternoon, as Alabama showed its dominance in dismantling Florida. Finally, Texas survived a scare from Nebraska and Georgia Tech nipped Clemson.

Envision how that same Saturday might look in 2011. In a single day we could watch theoretical matchups of Ohio State-Nebraska, USC-Oregon, Texas-Oklahoma, Alabama-Florida and Virginia Tech-Florida State. Every one with a championship and major bowl bid at stake. Most would have at least a little bit of national title implication. I consider myself a fortunate man in many ways, and one of those reasons is that my wife always has a girls' shopping weekend on the first weekend of December, leaving me with the house and TV set to myself. Just take my credit card sweetheart, just leave the remote.

That's the coming new order of college football. In the meantime, we've got another exciting year ahead of us. And that's what the Notebook will be focused on this month. Be sure to check back throughout August for conference previews, starting with the Big East tomorrow.

Dan Flaherty is the editor of the Notebook Family of sports blogs, published thorugh the Real Clear Sports blog network, offering daily commentary on baseball and previews in college football and the NFL.