Sleeping in last weekend, the thought occurred to me quite quickly — college football is starting.

The thrill of watching the South’s favorite sport surged through my veins, and I immediately tried to find a game to watch.

Last weekend, a long one because of the Labor Day holiday, was a great start to college football.

Auburn scraped by Washington, Alabama trounced Louisville, LSU demolished Miami and how about that Maryland team?

Those are just a few of the many, many games that were played over the weekend.

When I typically drive around, I do a lot of thinking, and one thought recently came to mind was that each college football team writes its own stories.

What I mean is that from the start of the season to the end, each team is on its separate journey.

The way they get to the end goal is the best part of the story.

Each year, coaches talk about how their team has a certain identity. High school coaches talk about this, too.

Three years ago, Alabama head football coach Nick Saban talked about the team after an early-season win. The following quote may not seem like he’s talking about the team’s identity, but he kind of eludes to it.

“When we play games like this, I told the players that if you don’t have the right intensity and the right focus, you’re going to get exposed,” Saban said on The Bleacher Report’s website. “These teams that you play are all good enough to expose you if you don’t have the right focus and intensity on what you need to do to go out there and do a good job of finishing. We obviously didn’t do a good job getting that point across, because I don’t think we finished like we needed to.”

A team’s identity is always found during the early part of the season.

Once it’s found, then it’s all golden the rest of the way.

College football is a great sport, and one I hope doesn’t ever go away.