At the end of September — one full month down, two full months to go — the college football regular season is immersed in a waiting game.

Anyone and everyone who follows college football for a living is waiting for this season to take off. It currently is on the launching pad, but hasn’t yet gained clearance to get off the ground.

Part of this is the nature of every season’s schedule. Part of this is the nature of the 2019 schedule in particular. Part of this is the reality that there are six or seven really good teams, and then a large gap separating the top tier from the second tier.

Let’s tackle these items one by one.

The college football schedule is structured so that when the weather gets colder and people are more likely to stay indoors, the bigger games will be on television. LSU-Alabama, Auburn-Georgia, and Auburn-Alabama, three huge Southeastern Conference rivalries which will clarify the national championship picture this year, are regularly played in the month of November. This is called “backloading” the schedule, putting the showcase games on the back end to build suspense and, ultimately, TV ratings.

We’re waiting.

The 2019 schedule in particular has made it harder for American TV (ESPN, primarily) to stuff each weekend’s schedule with quality games.

The nuance about this year’s schedule is that it is the longest regular-season schedule in the 150-year history of college football: August 24 was Day 1. December 14 will be the last day, when Army plays Navy.

Why is this?

17 amazing facts about the 2019 college football schedulehttps://t.co/pZHTAlEQgG pic.twitter.com/FvSqgNll9Y

— FBSchedules.com (@FBSchedules) August 20, 2019

American Thanksgiving — on the fourth Thursday of November — is the latest it can possibly be this year: Nov. 28. This put the final large slate of season-ending rivalry games on Nov. 29 and 30. Accordingly, the conference championship games — the last large group of games on the regular-season schedule — will be played on Dec. 6 and 7, as late as possible on the calendar.

This stretches the schedule.

As a point of comparison, in a year when American Thanksgiving falls as EARLY as possible on the calendar — Nov. 22 instead of 28 — the rivalry games are played on Nov. 23 and 24. The conference championship games are played on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. The season is basically shortened by one week.

This year, it is extended by one week.

This means more TV dates for ESPN to fill. There can’t be as many dates crammed with elite matchups. There are more weekends such as the one we just had in Week 5, with a lot of blowouts: Oklahoma over Texas Tech in the early afternoon, Alabama over Ole Miss in the late afternoon, Auburn over Mississippi State at night, and Ohio State over Nebraska at night.

The big showcases come later in the season: Oklahoma versus Texas in two weeks, all those SEC matchups I referred to above (Alabama-LSU being the biggest), Ohio State-Wisconsin in the Big Ten on Oct. 26, and Ohio State-Penn State on Nov. 23.

If this season doesn’t seem very sexy to you, you’re right to think that way.

Like Ted Knight’s character in Caddyshack: “WELLLLL, WE’RE WAITING.”

That’s not a fun reality… but better to give you a harsh reality instead of a feel-good falsehood, right?