It seems so close, yet so far away.

The dog days of summer are here and fans across the SEC are undoubtedly getting anxious to see some football.

But there are still several weeks until the first helmet is strapped up for fall practice, leaving us to daydream about how things will be this fall.

We feel your pain. So to pass the time, let’s put on the soundtrack of the fall and discuss the 10 things that we miss most about SEC football.

The Weekly Buildup

Even though teams play just once a week, football season has a way of making every day seem exciting. From the early-week coaches press conferences addressing all of our burning questions from last weekend’s game to the updates on injuries and discussions of strategy for the upcoming opponent, the work week seems to fly by as we look forward to the next Saturday.

The Smack Talk

For some groups of friends, the SEC football smack talk runs 365 day per year. But the intensity of the verbal sparring ratchets up a notch during the season. Every Alabama fan has an Auburn friend, and every Ole Miss fan a Mississippi State friend. You may pretend to not watch each other’s games, but somehow you’re able to remind them of every painstaking detail of Saturday’s loss via text message on Monday morning.

The Friday Night Butterflies

For most hardcore fans, football is a weekend-long experience. It starts on Friday night as the results of high school football games start rolling in. After you check the results of your alma mater’s game and see which of the SEC’s top recruits ran for seven touchdowns against the top defense in his state, reality sets in that a full day of SEC football is just hours away. Settling down for bed is akin to getting a kid to sleep on Christmas Eve.

The Wagering

Betting on college football is a Saturday tradition in SEC country. It can be as small as a five-dollar handshake bet settling a dispute over who won the 2002 Heisman Trophy at a pregame tailgate, or as serious as your pal making a play on the money line with the local bookie as a last-ditch effort to make his mortgage payment. Either way, all parties involved are 100-percent certain they have chosen the right side of the wager and will inevitably have their mood impacted by the outcome.

The Tailgating

Let’s be honest. Sitting under a tent eating pigs in a blanket and drinking out of a Solo cup just isn’t as fun when done alone in your backyard. We need those rows of tent dwellers listening to the pregame show on the radio and kids tossing the pigskin around with a backdrop of the stadium in the distance to make ourselves feel alright about this pastime. There are only six to eight home games each season, so plan those menus carefully. We don’t have any room for a tailgate wasted on bad grub.

The Personalities

The heat of the summer is when our favorite SEC football personalities seem to go into hibernation. We are just a couple of weeks away from Steve Spurrier and Les Miles entertaining us at SEC Media Days, but even that is just a tease of the visor tosses and grass-eating to come this fall. Until then, we’ll have to rely on daydreaming about Nick Saban chastising reporters and Gus Malzahn and Bret Bielema having spirited debates about pace of play to pass the time.

The Marching Bands

Sure, you can pull out your phone and listen to that recording of Rocky Top that you have set as your ringtone 100 times in a row, but it still can’t compare to The Pride of the Southland Marching Band playing it on a crisp fall afternoon. The pageantry and performance of fight songs is one of the things that sets college football apart from nearly every other sport, and nobody does it better than the band and spirit squads in the SEC. The emotion, pride and spirit is one of the things that just doesn’t come through on a video recording. We need to see it live.

The Officiating Crews

The one thing that fans of all 14 SEC programs can agree on: the referees are out to get us. Much like a group of habitual speeders complaining about receiving traffic tickets, fans of each SEC team are convinced that there is an on-field conspiracy against their team or in favor of another. While the off-season might seem like good times for a group that dislikes officials, our lives seem a bit out of balance without someone to shoulder the blame for the day-to-day happenings for our teams. Rest assured, the officials will be back soon to call a holding penalty on your team’s 83-yard punt return.

The Thrill of Victory

There is nothing quite like celebrating a hard-fought victory on a Saturday evening. When your team plays to or exceeds expectations, it seems like the glass is half full for everything in life. Conference wins are few and far between for some teams, which makes the taste of success even more intoxicating. Bonus thrill points are awarded for upsets, rivalries and overtime games, but celebrating a 73-3 win over Lamar (looking at you, Texas A&M) or squeaking out a 21-20 nail-biter over Charleston Southern (looking at you, Vanderbilt) are still thrilling in their own ways.

The Agony of Defeat

British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote that is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Or something like that. Even though we spend all year convincing ourselves they will never happen, losses are an inevitable part of the football season for nearly every SEC team. So as weird as it is to say in July, we even miss those depressing performances. After all, mourning a loss on a fall afternoon means that we got to experience a day full of SEC football, and that’s better than what we have right now. Right?