Editor’s Note: Saturday Down South received an advanced reading copy of “The Last Season” by Stuart Stevens.

When I was younger, my father sat me down on a Saturday afternoon to teach me one of the finer points of being a man: an unabashed love of college football. He wanted to make me a Miami Hurricanes fan. Instead, I became a Florida Gators fan, and my father’s biggest disappointment.

Yet, still, on Saturdays we’d get together and watch the games. We’d spend time together, talk, drink a few beers, and relish our mutual hatred of Florida State.

The games we watched were important, but not as important as the time we spent together. It’s why football is a religion down South, and why SEC fans are so rabid. Our emotions are not just attached to the teams we bleed for but also to the people who introduced us to the game.

Amidst the controversy that surrounds the game today with the talks of paying student athletes, the scandals, the concussions, the off-field violence, and the unending desire to win big and win big, now, Stuart Stevens reminds us why football on Saturday’s is so important in his new book, “The Last Season.”

At 60 years old, Stevens realized his father was 95 and he wanted one last season with his father. He remembered his father taking him to the games of his beloved Ole Miss Rebels as a child during the early 1960s. Games surrounded by racial tensions as desegregation came to Mississippi. And how he and his father could talk forever as long as they talked about football.

He juxtaposes his memories of those childhood games with games from the 2013 season, describing the emotional swings both in a game and throughout the season, from Ole Miss’s victory over Vanderbilt to start the season, the painful shutout by Alabama. And between the games, the conversations with random fans and talks he has with his 95-year-old father.

“The Last Season” is a nostalgic look at college football reminding us that what matters is not the outcome of the game but who watches the game with you and who you pass the game on to.