In May, I began to remind my girlfriend that starting with the first Saturday in September, I would be waking up at 5:30 a.m. and moving to our couch to watch college football all day long. I was very clear about this.

The only way I leave the couch is if:

1. I must begin tailgating for a University of Hawai'i home football game.

2. I must go to a bar to watch UH play on the road.

She knew this months before the season began.

If somehow she forgot, she needed only look at the full-size Iowa Hawkeye helmet atop our television or the inflated cable bill brought on by the $100 purchase of ESPN Gameplan, which allows me to watch every Iowa game as well as all the marquee matchups from the major conferences.

Despite warning after warning, there I was in the third quarter of the Ohio State-Texas game — getting ready to go to a wedding. I wasn't getting married, obviously, because if and when I get married, I will sure as heck not do it during football season.

OK, so it was her dad's wedding, his third, and I jokingly told my girlfriend if I played the percentages and skipped the ceremony, there was still a chance I would see her dad get married again in our lifetime.

She did not laugh, and she does not approve of my habit.

I went to the wedding, which was truly beautiful, and missed a dramatic Texas rally.

After behaving like a 5-year-old, I was sure that my sloth-like Saturdays would no longer be disturbed.

But the very next week, she sprung another one on me: a friend's birthday party scheduled smack dab in the middle of Miami-Clemson, and Notre Dame-Michigan State.

I'm sure many people marvel at the way some grown men and women become simplistic fools with the snap of a football, and I'm positive I must come off as a selfish toddler with a skewed set of priorities.

"It's a sickness," says an afflicted friend of mine from high school. "But I find nothing, whatsoever, wrong with it."

Football season, like Christmas, comes but once a year, and I need to savor as much of it as I can.

In the end, I blame my father. Over the years, I have watched him leave family parties so he could attend UH basketball games. I have witnessed him yell at car radios and lecture television sets.

As for my girlfriend's friend's birthday party?

That was an incredible finish in the Notre Dame game, wasn't it?

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.