I once knew a girl. She always started to get sad at this time of year.

The hot days of summer were disappearing, and all the while, night crept up sooner. Each passing day got increasingly windy, rainy and cloudy. Days like those would lead to the nightmare of snow and the sort of blues that creep up each year when the days get shorter.

My smarter counterparts in the copy-edit business tell me that this is called Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. I, on the other hand, am suffering from a reverse sort of disorder.

I get happy at this time of year. My copy-edit counterparts tell me that there is no term or acronym for my problem. They tell me that it is just a really strange thing (they are not sure if it is actually a disorder). I think of it as Seasonal Sports Happiness.

There is less than a month left until the best time of the year.

Football is in full swing; the Badgers open Big Ten play this Saturday after what seemed like the longest non-conference schedule any team has ever played. The NFL is already one-fourth of the way complete, just far enough in to really be interesting. ESPN airs “The NFL Tonight” several times daily and is showing no signs of slowing, while “Baseball Tonight” will be gone once November rolls around. That’s a plus right there.

With the dreary weather and rain yesterday came my first thoughts of basketball season, and happy thoughts they were. NBA teams opened training camps earlier this week, and the Wisconsin men’s basketball team continued to “run the hill.”

Preseason in the Bo Ryan era of basketball at UW begins with grueling conditioning, where players put on more miles than a Deadhead hippie bus. Who can argue with Bo’s tactics? After all, Wisconsin found success under Ryan’s rule last season.

Last season’s team overcame all odds to capture a share of a Big Ten title and make a few waves in the NCAA tournament. The impressive part was that it was generally picked to finish seventh or eighth in the Big Ten. What could have been expected of a team with six freshmen and three walk-ons? “Not much” was the answer, but they excelled under Coach Ryan.

This year, the team returns three players, including first-team all-Big Ten player Kirk Penney. Also back are the team’s first two players off the bench. The team will be as young as last year’s team, but that didn’t seem like a problem when the group was winning the Big Ten.

Ryan’s first recruiting class will have a chance to see action soon, and by all accounts the group is more athletic than any Wisconsin group in recent memory. UW has stocked up on rangy, athletic players who can play shooting guard and small forward while adding more size inside.

The Bo Ryan era had a storybook beginning last season, and most analysts and prognosticators believe Wisconsin is a program on the rise. How can you not like this time of year? Basketball season is creeping closer each day.

If that doesn’t make you smile, don’t forget about all the people who were waiting outside the Kohl Center last weekend. Hundreds of fans braved the chilly night air for a chance to bang on the glass and yell “sieve” at the opposition during the Badger hockey team’s home games.

The Badgers’ opener is just eight days away, and hockey fans feel like they have something to look forward to. Mike Eaves has quietly been nabbing top recruits from around the country and Canada since he took the reigns to the storied UW hockey program after the retirement of Jeff Sauer.

I don’t like cold weather any more than anyone else, but it seems like a small price to pay to get to have basketball and hockey seasons at UW, not to mention football just gets better and better the colder it gets. No one ever remembers the games played in hot weather at the beginning of the year, but games like the Ice Bowl go down in history as much for the weather as for the game itself.

You might have tests, you might have class and it might be raining on you, but don’t get depressed about it. Look on the bright side of things: No more regular-season baseball games (I do concede the playoffs are good fun), basketball begins, and you can continue to make a glutton of yourself with a weekend filled with football and beer.

It all starts soon at a stadium very near you. Don’t miss it, especially if you want to cheer up. The girl I once knew . . . she didn’t like sports. That was probably her real problem — don’t make the same mistake.