Every so often, covering Marshall football beats the heck out of work.
You could do worse than watching repetitive practices that drive you nuts by the 20th of August. Or dealing with grumpy coaches, players' brushes with the law or the occasional airline delay.
You could do worse than covering a coaching search (on second thought, you can't) or listening to fans celebrate the commitment of an untested four-star recruit (on second thought, you can't).
But you can't do better than waking up and realizing it's a football game day. Players, coaches, fans, cheerleaders, band members, media hacks, ushers, elevator operators, concession-stand workers - you name it, they're excited.
It's why football is king.
For most college teams, the first kickoff is 54 days away (61 for the Thundering Herd, which starts a week later). Occasionally, I have to tell a fan to take a deep breath and enjoy the rest of the offseason.
But preseason magazines have hit the shelves and preseason polls are about to trickle out. The always-flawed bowl projections have begun. Everybody thinks they know how the season will unfold, but nobody really does.
And nobody really knows what is going to happen on game day, because no two games are quite the same.
I have been privileged to cover football for the Gazette and the Gazette-Mail for 14 years, trying to put these crazy games into plain English for those who did or did not attend. In these days of live social media - I much prefer Twitter - I can interact with fans on the spot, whether they're in the stadium or watching on TV.
In those 14 seasons, I have covered 172 of the Herd's 175 games, with the Herd winning 96. There were 12-2 and 13-1 seasons, and there was ... the Mark Snyder era.
A few games were a waste of time (Herd 55, Gardner Webb 0). Several were painfully predictable (Herd 34, Charlotte 10 last year; I picked 33-10). Other times, you can pick the winner but still be startled by what happened (Marshall 36, Kent State 29, two overtimes).
And then there were the strangest games. Almost always, these back me up against one of my two deadlines and foil all efforts to write in advance. Fourth-down winning TD passes at 11:15 p.m. Eastern (Middle Tennessee 51, Herd 49)? That's fun. A fourth-down pass interference late in the game with the result hanging in the balance at 11:30 (MU-Miami of Ohio)? That's double fun.
Night games with a full moon are potentially wild. Eight o'clock games are usually crazy. Mix the two? Uh, oh.
A number of Herd games in the past 14 years are instant conversation-starters. They were strange, odd, head-shaking, unusual and any related adjective you dredge up.
At this time in the offseason, I am dusting off 12 to jog your memory, whether you like them or not - Marshall won seven of these and lost five, but all five of the losses were gut-punchers.
Four came in the same season, equaling those in the entire five-year Snyder era. One opponent comes up three different times.
Amazingly, only one was a bowl game. Remember, I wasn't a MU beat writer at the time of the 2001 GMAC Bowl, which could have led this list by a country mile.
If this were a list of singularly strange moments, I could easily name a dozen, such as Louisville coach Charlie Strong's postgame tirade after losing to MU in 2011. The U of L made the mistake of carrying the press conference on the video board and loudspeakers - emphasis on "loud."
I had to cut a few games to get the list down to 12, and it wasn't easy.
The aforementioned 2015 Kent State win (Herd freshman Chase Litton went from near-goat to hero in one play) and the 65-59 double-overtime loss to East Carolina in 2012 were pared. So were MU's 34-13 loss at West Virginia in a 2011 game cut short by repeated heavy thunderstorms, and the 24-21 overtime loss to WVU in 2010.
Today, I count down my strangest games in those 14 years. All had an impact beyond that particular game.
All are part of the continuing, colorful history of Marshall football.
Read it and cheer, Herd fans. Or weep, when appropriate.
Contact Doug Smock at 304-348-5130 or dougsmock@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @dougsmock and read his blog at http://blogs.wvgazettemail.com/dougsmock/.