This is an opinion column.

There’s a certain beauty of late August.

Your lawn’s baking under a blowtorch sun, but you’re starting to get manageable evenings. The kids are back in school. We’re about to celebrate labor by taking a day off.

And football.

You can almost smell the sizzling meats on the grill as we brush aside lawsuit settlements, boot the lawyers into some ditch and get back to the roots of why college football is about to dominate the next almost five months of our lives.

Those are the standard last-week-of-August feels.

This one’s different, though.

We’re about to embark on a fall unlike the others — the intersection of so many new eras slapped into the same hamburger patty that even this cynical newsman’s heart thawed to find a genuine youthful excitement for what’s to come.

Because it feels, for the first time in a while, like we just have no clue how it’s all going to work.

Truly, we’re plowing new snow in what’s felt somewhat formalized and predictable. A phone call with my dad from the other day illustrates this new reality to perfection as we broke down the Florida State-Georgia Tech game for an audience of just us.

“Well,” he said, “I guess that takes care of Florida State and the Playoff.”

Except it doesn’t!

Leave your BCS/four-team playoff brains in the SEC West division because we’re entering a new world that even EA Sports couldn’t replicate.

With that said, here is my list of reasons even this rotting husk of a sports guy can find joy at the dawn of this new season.

— What’s good? There’s something liberating about having no clue. A year ago, Dad would have nailed the elimination of FSU. This year, the 12-team playoff opens so many more scenarios/debates/fights because there’s no precedent. No data points.

You could hear it in the voices of SEC coaches last year at spring meetings. Some wanted no part of a nine-game league schedule because they didn’t know how many losses were tolerable to remain in the playoff conversation.

Could a three-loss team win a national championship? WHO KNOWS? It’s horrifying for the control-freak coaches but fun as a Gator in jorts for the rest of us.

— Conference play: I’ll also be the first to admit I was hesitant to say goodbye to East vs. West in the SEC because a few secondary rivalries would perish. On second thought, fine. Some of those became painfully predictable (see Alabama vs. Mississippi State or Arkansas). Nobody was fighting for those other than hotel owners in Fayetteville and Alabama’s coaching staff.

Now it feels wide open, less scripted and more unpredictable.

Because that’s what makes this the kind of competitive fun that keeps us coming back.

— Conference fights: They already swallowed the Pac-12 so the two-tiered Survivor 4 are in a new dance. The SEC and Big Ten are driving the tractor-trailer and the ACC and Big 12 are trying to cross the road.

How many SEC and Big Ten teams will make that playoff? Will this give the lead dogs what they need to tilt the next draft of the playoff format even further in their favor?

— Just the teams: There’s just an interesting dynamic among the teams at the top and in the next few tiers that follow.

Georgia’s almost the default top team.

Ohio State is the lab-created NIL team that has a coach with a 56-8 record on the hot seat.

Texas and Oregon have sky high expectations in the same season they have to navigate completely new conferences.

Alabama … you know.

Ole Miss has the highest expectations in three generations of Mannings and a coach who needs to put up or chill out on Twitter.

Each the teams from 7-20 in the preseason poll could do anything and it wouldn’t be shocking. Is transfer-allergic Clemson a national player? Is Miami more than a tax fraud? Is that really Missouri at No. 11?

Then there’s Auburn, a team who appeared on one AP preseason ballot at No. 24, yet convinced me it will be a problem in the SEC this fall.

— Northwestern’s stadium: Seriously, have you seen this? They’re rebuilding their full stadium so the Big Ten flavor of Vanderbilt is playing most of its home games here this season.

— The new rules: We’ll see if this helmet communication system will work in the college game, if it will lead to more huddles or the same frantic chaos that separates it from the plastic professional counterpart.

The two-minute warning was also passed down because there’s nothing more sacred than the commercials that keep this whole house of cards afloat.

You’ll also see tablets on the sidelines, a few new video replay regulations, and an expansion of the horse collar tackle rule to include the tackle box.

— Hot seats, coaching moves: We already mentioned the incredible nature of Ryan Day’s win-or-pack potential at Ohio State. But there are a few other notable jobs that could come open.

The most compelling of those coaches/programs has to be Billy Napier and Florida. The former Alabama assistant faces arguably the hardest schedule in the nation at the exact moment the alums are getting antsy. The season opener with Miami is a top-5 most intriguing game of the weekend because it will set the tone either with early momentum or the early call to the moving company.

Folksy Sam Pittman overachieved early at Arkansas but the locals are now calling for more than the hogs in Fayetteville.

We’re in an era of transition where jobs are more transactional than ever. Consider that three of last season’s four playoff teams have new head coaches.

Also keep in mind 20-25 teams have playoff expectations — a few with downright mandates — but still just who can fill the bracket. Out-of-wack expectations and an unknowable reality of what it takes to make the field has coaches nervous and agents ready.

And finally, the calendar. We’re in for the longest college football season in history. The playoff will span a full month from first-round games beginning Dec. 20 and running straight through the title game Jan. 20 in Atlanta.

Getting accustomed to the rhythm of this marathon will be a challenge we’re ready to accept.

Figure in the coaching carousel, recruiting and the transfer portal opening all in that same window and, folks, it’s gonna get weird.

But that’s exactly what makes this season so quirky and interesting.

For a sport built on the traditions we’ve always adored, this fall will add a few twists and some beautiful unknowns to that tailgate grill.

You can smell it already.

It’s wafting past your dying lawn on that almost-autumn breeze to usher in this new era where the old meets new.

Institutions evolve. Hearts thaw.

And nobody’s playoff dream will die before Labor Day.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.