Here at the beginning of the 2023 college football season, with everything happening so fast, it’s important to take a moment amid all the changes coming for this glorious sport and first offer our sincerest measure of gratitude for those elder statesmen of college football who have dedicated so much of their lives to giving us a form of entertainment that’s so … what’s the right word … unpredictable?

Nick Saban? No.

I’m talking about Bo Nix, of course, and if you’re wondering why the lede of this column ran on and on and on like a quarterback scramble on fourth-and-long against LSU, then it’s because the combined beauty of those 67 words stand as a metaphor for the length of Nix’s snaking, complicated career.

This is a Bo Nix appreciation column because maybe there’s no better way to welcome a new college football season here at what feels like the end of a sport’s greatest epoch than with a tribute to a player whose time in football has spanned some of the most transformative years in collegiate athletics. Is Nix the face of change in college football? No clue, really, but he was once the face of Milo’s Sweet Tea and that feels like ages ago.

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This could finally be the year that Nix wins the Heisman Trophy. That’s at least what some people in the Pacific Northwest want to believe. Count me among the college football lifers who will be rooting for him, and not just because I want him to get another shot at Georgia (0-4 against the Bulldogs for his career). If any quarterback’s career embodies the theatrical legacy of John Heisman, then it’s Auburn’s former Shakespearian tragedy of a signal caller. Nix is college football’s finest showman, and that’s good enough for me.

Nix is the quarterback of the Oregon Ducks, and it’s hard not to be happy for a guy whose career is longer than the Oregon Trail. Before riding that big Auburn stagecoach of drama out west, Nix was the Tigers’ starting quarterback from his freshman to his first junior season. The COVID-19 pandemic gave him a bonus season, and now Nix, after all these many years drawing up plays in the dirt, is finally going into the final act of his eligibility.

Can Nix be the best player in college football? That’s one of the big questions going into the season. Maybe so, but all I really know is that Nix will make things interesting. In this business, isn’t that the greatest gift of all?

Nix has been in the spotlight so long as a football player that I had to grab a ladder the other day and change out the LED light bulbs. He was a legacy player for Auburn once upon a time and now he is the final legacy of an entire conference. Who better to win the Heisman and raise the national championship trophy before the Pac-12 goes kaboom?

Nix began his career way back when the Pac-12 was whole, and he’s closing it all down in the shadow of total West Coast football liquidation. Would Oregon have been invited into the Big Ten without the radiant glow of Nix’s blinding star power? I guess we’ll never truly know for sure.

And Oregon gets it, too. They’re already hyping Nix for the Heisman Trophy. There are building-sized billboards of Nix all over the country. He deserves all of the attention, of course, after surviving in college football longer than former Auburn coach Bryan Harsin. No one appreciates that more than me. I’ve been writing about Nix for as long as anyone can remember and that includes his family.

Nix has seen so much. He defeated Oregon in the first game of his career and now he has dreams of winning a natty with Oregon at the end of it all. What a storybook ending that would be, and especially if it came against Georgia in the Bulldogs’ bid for a three-peat. Nix has been around so long that Oregon coach Dan Lanning was a first-year defensive coordinator at Georgia for Nix’s freshman season.

What can Nix’s career tell us about the future? Again, no clue. I’m not football’s Nostradamus, but I do know that Nix’s story is a tome with more books than the Bible. If one player in this entire country represents the twisting, spinning, hectic soap opera that is college football over the last five years, then it is the man whose likeness now stands high above the Oregon-loving cities of Dallas and New York.

Nix’s journey started at Auburn back before things like NIL collectives and endorsement deals for college athletes even existed. He was a trailblazer, repping Milo’s Sweet Tea on social media at midnight on the first day the NCAA allowed players to make money off their celebrity. As a quarterback, he’s the last person at the position for Auburn to win the Iron Bowl.

How old is Old Man Nix? He’s actually only 23 years old, but consider these reflections of time when putting it into the proper perspective.

Nix moved the needle as a recruit before Joe Burrow moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Baton Rouge. As a freshman, Nix beat out fellow Tigers quarterback Malik Willis, who then transferred to Liberty to play for Hugh Freeze. All these years later, Freeze is now entering his first season as Auburn’s coach.

Nix’s career is so mature that it predates the ability of Kenny Dillingham to grow facial hair. Dilly-Dilly was Nix’s first offensive coordinator at Auburn and now Dillingham is the head coach at Arizona State. And what about this throwback? Alabama defensive coordinator Kevin Steele was at Auburn when Nix began his career with the Tigers. In between those two rivals, Steele had time to coach at Tennessee and Miami.

The best player in college football entering the 2023 season is USC quarterback Caleb Williams. My pick to beat him and make the College Football Playoff? The guy from Pinson, Alabama, whose career even managed to outlast the infighting at Auburn.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, hope and rum. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.