This is an opinion column.

For my generation, few TV shows have the cultural relevance to match “The Office”. Its commentary on office life, the absurdity of middle management and the people who fill the Tuesday afternoons of your life stuck with so many of us.

The show’s quotability became rooted in our lexicon bit this goofball comedy actually went deep in its finale. Ed Helms’ character, Andy Bernard, hit us with a thought that applies to life in general, but we’re here to talk about sports and the moment in which we find ourselves.

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

Nostalgia is for tomorrow. Living the now is better.

And we’re knee-deep in the good old days of a moment nobody realistically imagined.

In a state where football success is considered a birthright, basketball’s largely been more of a comma than an exclamation point. For most, but not all, it was a bridge from bowl games to spring ball where nobody wanted to lose but few carried the same existential dread.

There was a time when the NCAA bubble was aspirational and Kentucky monopolized the SEC.

But their blue banners are starting to fade a little. Their good days, in a very relative sense, are a few years old.

And while we know they’ll be back again, the balance of power shifted to football country.

Perhaps it’s the fact that this window could close at any time that makes the power of right now so strong.

So we should embrace every minute of this incredible week.

Auburn and Alabama are arguably the country’s best two men’s college basketball teams. One poll has the Tigers on top, the other has the Crimson Tide.

They’re 1-2 in both.

It’s mind-blowing how far these two have come from Wednesday nights in Nashville and peeling NIT logo stickers off game floors to a mid-February mountaintop.

And that’s where this sport can be tricky because we so often define success with how things end rather than the totality of that journey.

Both Alabama and Auburn have reached No. 1 in recent years only to sputter in NCAA tournament play. Those March shortcomings overshadowed the monumental achievements that built expectations to the point of perceived underachievement.

There can be only one national champion at the end of an entertaining tournament that sometimes crowns the hottest team and not always the best one.

We say that to not let tomorrow’s potential failure rob the moment we’re living today. Because, statistically, at least one of these two teams will end the season with a loss.

It’s about soaking in the historical nature of the 3 p.m. CT Saturday meeting in Coleman Coliseum.

This is, without doing a lick of research, the biggest regular-season game in the state’s history. No. 1 vs. No. 2 is rare enough. No. 1 vs. No. 1 is on another level so embrace every moment.

Talk that trash.

Buy the ticket.

Don’t let the moment pass because you don’t know when it will come again, if ever.

These programs are a coaching change away from sliding from this crescendo that’s been building for a few years.

Both crossed the Final Four off program bucket lists, first with Bruce Pearl in 2019 and then for Nate Oats in 2024.

Now, they’ve built rosters this season capable of raising the only banner missing from their respective rafters. These are wildly talented teams, deep but with top-end talent among the top individual players in the nation.

Both retained the kind of veteran leadership most teams need to go from good to great, contenders to champions.

Having those stars align in the same season with the scheduling gods pairing them, by chance, in the same week they split No. 1 rankings would be amazing in any rivalry. Duke and North Carolina — the bluest of bloods — have only met once in a No. 1 vs. No. 2 game.

It’s never happened between two SEC teams.

And no football Iron Bowl has ever matched the top-two teams in the polls, so how’s that for history?

So make Andy Bernard proud.

Let “The Office” be a guiding light as unexpected as an Alabama-Auburn No. 1 vs. No. 1 basketball game.

These are the good old days.

Embrace them.

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