PISCATAWAY, N.J. — The beauty of it, of course, is what knocks the wind out of you later.

When you're Fresno State, today begins a single-elimination tournament. If that's what you want to call college football's format.

Actually, it's a ruse, a fraud, a contest with different rules for different competitors. For Fresno State, it's a single-elimination tournament. For Ohio State, it's an automatic berth.

The Bulldogs are trying to get to the ocean without touching sand, going a sword fight in a straight jacket.

No one said it was fair, just that it was the most exciting sport going.

A Fresno State loss today wouldn't make the season a dead fish, but it sure would have that odor. That excitement you feel, the way you snapped awake with Christmas morning urgency, the setting of the TiVo, the inviting of friends, it's all because today's game matters so much.

(Chances are, you bought ice for today, and bad days rarely include the purchasing of ice.)

Whatever you're feeling is launched from the realization that there is no loser's bracket. Which means, unfortunately, that there is no loser's bracket.

Boise State and Hawaii have already done it. They went undefeated through regular seasons. They were perfect. They made BCS games. But they snuck into the party through the side door. They started with schedules that gave them no shot at winning a championship, and really what is the point if you aren't trying to win the biggest prize?

Even knowing that, it's remarkable the respect the Fresno State football team has earned on the East Coast.

"The excitement is palpable," says John C. Baker, the voice of the Marching Scarlet Knights band. "And not just because it's the first game, but because it's Fresno State. They've been mentioned by ESPN all week, as you know, as a team that could win a lot of games. It's a truly viable opponent for us in the first week. Everyone's saying it's comparable to when Illinois came here a couple years ago."

The Bulldogs would like to be more than viable. They'd like to march field a few times before Baker does his halftime musical introductions. The Bulldogs would like to, as "Nuke" LaLoosh so eloquently put it in "Bull Durham," announce their presence with authority.

Answers should be provided early as to what kind of season it could be. And for as much potential as the 2008 Fresno State team has, there are plenty of unknowns.

The starting punter, sophomore Robert Malone, has kicked just two punts since the 2006 season, and those were at home against Sacramento State. Neither was very good and he was then removed for a walk-on.

The kicker, redshirt freshman Kevin Goessling, has obviously never made a field goal or an extra point in a college game, and he's certainly never done it in front of 42,000 observers who'd like him to shank one into his long snapper's thigh.

The long snapper is new too, redshirt freshman Bobby Shepard. No, he isn't in the game much, so we should also note that the center, junior Richard Pacheco, has never started either.

"Honestly, words can't describe it," Pacheco said. "A lot of emotions are flowing but (I'm) very, very anxious. ... (I) really just want to get it started."

Two of the three Fresno State linebackers, sophomores Nico Herron and Chris Carter, are starting for the first time. Carter didn't even play linebacker last year.

"(Rutgers will) have some guys getting their first snaps, too," Bulldogs coach Pat Hill said. "Everybody does."

Not every team has to win immediately, though, play a tough opponent on the road, walk that narrow, slanted fence between small-conference facilities and big-conference dreams.

There is a one-loss scenario that could still put the Bulldogs in a BCS game, but it's not something they want to chance..

It's never easy, not on the stomach or the nerves, but there is no better place to be, the moment of a new season's kickoff, when everything seems possible.

Hill sums it up well: "We'll see."