The U.S. Open begins in 10 days. College football kicks off in 13 days. I’m very excited about both. After a boring summer mostly filled with baseball (zzzzzz…), Americans all leaving Wimbledon very early, and World Cup soccer (actually, the soccer wasn’t that bad), I’m looking forward to something to watch again. College football is great, and the U.S. Open, as I’ve mentioned before, is my favorite of the grand slams. The next few weeks will be great.

However, my level of excitement will increase exponentially in mid-November when college basketball tips off. It is, in the sports world, what matters to me. I received an email from GoDuke.com yesterday informing me that the Blue Devils schedule for 2006-07 has been released, which I promptly posted on my Duke page. I’m looking forward to another great season for Coach K and the boys. Fortunately, Duke plays in the ACC and, well, they’re Duke, so nearly all of their games are televised. There’s nothing like the sights and sounds of Cameron Crazies. Man, I can’t wait until November.

This year will include another solid non-conference schedule. They’ll be playing in the College Basketball Experience Classic (formerly known as the Guardians Classic) in November, which also includes Marquette, Texas Tech and Stanford. They have repeat dates with Georgetown and Indiana, both of which were very good games last year. This year, though, they’re both at home instead of on the road. Krzyzewski usually schedules some strong “mid-majors”, and this year is no exception with Gonzaga and George Mason coming up in December. GMU is coming off of their Final Four appearance in March, and the Gonzaga game is, unfortunately, one year late. It would’ve been great to see these two teams, led by the two best players in the country in Adam Morrison and J.J. Redick, play last year. But, it should still be a great game.

As for the conference schedule, I immediately noticed that they will be playing Boston College twice this year. They played BC only once in the regular season last year, and then later in the ACC tournament. Both games were great, very close, and could’ve gone either way (both went to Duke) and I expect both games this year to be the same since they’ll both be very good again. BC seems to have become the new Maryland in only one season. Since Maryland has faded a little the last few years, that “rivalry” seems to have as well (at least for Duke fans - Maryland fans’ envy, I mean hatred, still fuels their fire for the “rivalry.”) BC provided two classics last year, so this year’s games will be highly anticipated, second only to the UNC games.

Other tight games last year included Virginia Tech and Florida State (twice), but I noticed they’ll only be playing each of them once this year, both at home. I don’t expect as much trouble from those teams this year.

Now, to my beef with the ACC. Because of the expansion a couple of years ago and the league divisions that it created, Duke is only playing NC State and Wake Forest once each. I hated the general idea of not being able to play every team twice during the regular season after the expansion. The ACC was the only major conference that was still able to do that, but no more. I hate it. But it’s even more annoying that they don’t get to play all three of the other “big four” schools twice. They’ll always play UNC twice - there was now way that was going to be taken away. There would’ve been rioting. However, now they are playing Wake and State only once, and that’s just wrong. Perhaps I shouldn’t complain too much - I’ve already mentioned how great the BC games were last year. Nevertheless, I’d rather have seen the Big East schools stay put and play everyone twice. That’s just the way it shoud be.

Okay, enough ranting. Overall, I like the schedule, and I think they’ll have a great opportunity (despite their youth) to have another excellent season this year. Football and tennis will be great in the meantime, but the real season starts November 12th.