Harrison Stanfill

The leaves are changing color, there is a crisp breeze blowing outside and Fayetteville is littered with motorcycles.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, fall is officially here. The arrival of fall means this is the most wonderful time of the year in the world of sports.

Everyone’s favorite pastime – college football – is getting into full swing along with the MLB playoffs and the NFL.

Those first few weeks of college football were like an extended preseason, especially for Arkansas, a chance to work out some kinks and get ready for the real season.

Now it’s time for the Razorbacks to travel through the gauntlet of the SEC West. There are not a lot of games left against teams of the New Mexico caliber, unless you count the Ole Miss game coming up in few weeks.

It’s not just Arkansas starting to play good competition either. It’s all over college football.

It is the season of conference play, and if you follow football you know that anything can happen when conference play starts. Every week it is life or death, and every week you are playing a “quality” team, once again Ole Miss is up for debate on this.

Conference play means that every game is important. You don’t want to slip up this early in the season.

Not only were there four games on Saturday where top 25 teams were pitted against each other, but there is also the baseball playoffs.

It is no secret that baseball is a dying sport and is losing viewers, but there is also a divide between the new school guys who are all about the Moneyball aspect and the old school guys who don’t believe in the “new way” and are all about RBIs and home runs.

Despite this chasm in the fans, it is understood that once it gets into the playoffs, all bets are off.

The road to the playoffs this year has been incredible. I have been a baseball fan my entire life and I can honestly say that Wednesday Sept. 28, was the greatest day in MLB history.

It had all of the elements that make for great baseball, Yankees and Red Sox, extra-inning heroics, sabotage and two underdog stories. Not only did the Cardinals come back a from 10.5-game deficit on August 25 to overtake the Atlanta Braves for the National League wild card, but the Tampa Bay Rays seized control of the American League wild card from the Boston Red Sox after overcoming a 9-game deficit in September, signifying the greatest collapse by any team in MLB History in the month of September.

This is what makes baseball great. After a grueling 162-game season, it all came down to the final day.  One day to decide who was going to the playoffs and who was staying home. So much drama and so much fight from four teams trying to make the playoffs.

Even though college football and the MLB playoff are getting into full swing, you still cant forget about the NFL and the parody unlike any other time in league history.

The usual suspects are sitting atop the league like Green Bay, New England, Balitimore and Dallas, but there are also some fresh faces trying to knock down doors and get recognized like Buffalo, Oakland and Washington.

This is why the NFL is so interesting this year.

It’s not inconceivable for the Bills and Raders to win a game in the first week because teams are still trying to figure everything out, but these teams are sitting at the tops of their divisions which is new territory.

If you are a sports fan then fall is your season. Things are heating up in three different leagues.

Every day of the week you are guaranteed a good game in one of the sports. Teams are fighting for their life whether it is early on or the closing minutes of your season, it truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

Harrison Stanfill is a guest columnist for The Arkansas Traveler. His column appears every Monday.