10 signs football is upon us

10. every morning at 6:30 your house's windows shudder and shake unevenly from the percussion section of local high school marching band practice - six miles away.

9. coverage of the US presidential election and European bailouts drop to pages four and five respectively when the USA Today NFL preview edition hits newsstands.

8. ESPN begins advertising the two-hour pre preseason special guide to new fall beer commercials.

7. a stack of decade-old-plus t-shirts your spouse, girlfriend or mom has been asking you to get rid of is carefully boxed and carried to the crawl space - and replaced by a box of decade-old-plus sweatshirts your spouse, girlfriend or mom had been asking you to get rid of that was carefully stored in the crawl space.

6. you are momentarily overcome by a light-headed giddy sense of euphoria that you won't have to watch any more baseball games to get a sports fix until the World Series is played sometime during football season in what appears to be blizzard conditions.

5. colleges and universities allow young people that are are into extracurricular activities like "pursuing a degree"and "hitting the library"back on campus in time for the first football game of the year.

4. you realize you know the first and middle names of every member of the offensive line of your alma mater even if you can't get first names of your own kids right every time.

3. ignoring pain from bunions and planter fasciitis you have your youngest child hold a football vertically on the ground so you can see if you can still kick a game-winning field goal as measured by the back of your garage roof.

2. you call your niece - at her father's and fiance's request - to see if you can talk her out of that Saturday afternoon wedding in the fall she is considering.

1. as you stretch out the inflamed rotator cuff and extend the half-locked knee joint, you think back fondly on all your old football injuries - even if you never played the sport.

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Mark Gilroy is author of the critically acclaimed novel Cuts Like a Knife. His second novel, Every Breath You Take, releases on October 23, 2012. A 30-year veteran of the publishing industry, he has served as publisher and executive vice president at several companies and currently runs a company that services retailers, publishers, ministries, and other organizations in the industry.