I’ve been waiting for this moment about as long as Head Coach Jeff Brohm has, but not in the sense you’re probably thinking.

Brohm has been waiting for this night his entire life. I’ve been waiting for tonight since January when he took the job.

He hasn’t said it, and he probably never will, but I’m sure he’s tired of answering the typical preseason questions like, “How do you replace so-and-so?” “Who needs work?” and “How anxious are you to finally coach your first game?”

Well, now here we are.

So-and-so is replaced, the work is done and as you can imagine, Brohm is ready and anxious to coach his first game as the boss.

I’m ready to evaluate how this team matches up against other opponents. Brohm has his team as ready as they can be for Bowling Green State tonight.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not nervous heading into his first game as a head coach.

“I think you always have a little bit of nerves and I definitely have those nerves right now,” Brohm said. “You want your team to play well, you want all the hard work to pay off, you want them to see the results, but not until you really get out there and get your feet wet do you know exactly where you stand. The fact that we’re playing a very good opponent is great for us. We get to see exactly where we stand right off the bat.”

It won’t be a cupcake opener for Brohm’s debut either. Heck, there are no cupcakes on the schedule at all in their first year in Conference USA.

Brohm’s not going to have a get-your-feet wet game to feel out his team and his head coaching styles. He prepared for all of that last year under Bobby Petrino and in years past when he coached for him. His 12-month audition was good enough to land him the job in January with the idea of maintaining the momentum left over from last year.

Instead, they’re getting the defending Mid-American Conference champions Bowling Green. The Falcons have a new coach in Dino Babers, who proved at Eastern Illinois he knows a thing or two about putting a high-scoring offense on the field.

So Brohm gets to start the season off at home against a team that is favored to win by a touchdown by multiple betting lines. So would a WKU win be considered a statement win?  

“It’d be huge. It’d definitely be a big win for us as a university, as a program,” senior defensive back Cam Thomas said. “Definitely a big win for our team to start off the season right in Conference USA even though it’s an out-of-conference game, it’d just be big to make a statement against a high-caliber opponent that won the MAC championship last year. We’re ready to make a statement this season.”

This team is ready to show they won’t miss a beat in the system Petrino established last year, and Brohm is ready to show that 11 years of waiting in the wings of his mentors could finally pay off.

Get ready. The Brohm era at WKU officially begins today.

So check your pulse, and let’s play football.