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There's something in the air again in Charlotte. Football season starts tonight.

All the practice games of summer and everything played up until now has led to this. When the sport came to the Carolinas all those years ago, this was what the NFL promised. A crucial division game against a hated rival in a packed stadium on a Monday night in December. It's easy to say it doesn't get any bigger than this, but it does. It gets a lot bigger from here on in.

The game between the Carolina Panthers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers has the feel of postseason with control of the NFC South in the balance, home-field advantage, tiebreakers and late momentum all at stake in a game that has been building all summer and through the first three months of the season.

When the NFL schedule was released back in the warm days of spring, the first thing the two organizations saw was this game -- Dec. 8, Tampa Bay at Carolina, 8:30 p.m., ESPN.

It's not an exaggeration to say that preparations for the game started then. The league takes its Monday games seriously, making occasional stops in the host cities just to check on things, camera angles, parking space for the caravan of trucks, traffic patters both on the ground and in the air.

The marketing machine cranks up, Monday games becoming a season in themselves with unique storylines and dedicated broadcast crews and commercial airtime that quietly reminds people that Monday is coming, that December is coming, and finally, that the hated Bucs are coming.

John Fox had tried to stay detached from all the hoopla leading up to a game the entire league had seen coming from way, way out. That the teams are colliding with the best December records any Monday night game could hope for -- both are 9-3 -- has only made the build-up bigger.

"If I really had my druthers," Fox said earlier this week, "it would be Sunday at 1 every game. There are a lot of neat things, a little bit like a playoff game. Everybody is watching you play. It can be good if you play good or it can be bad if you play bad. It's alright. It's good. It's at home."

He has to sometimes convince himself that things are good, what with all the distractions of special interviews only conducted for Monday night games, the meetings held with annoying TV personalities and smart-aleck sportswriters invited in for the only time all season, the crush of attention on things he would rather not pay any attention to at all.

And yet everywhere he's turned the past few weeks, someone has asked him about this game. The fact is, this is just one game. Just one division game with just one thing at stake.

Everything.

The winner of this game will join Tennessee and the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Steelers in that ever-changing inner club of "best teams in the league." There are others. The Jets were in and out quickly. The Colts are coming back into the discussions, and any number of other teams are close. But this is December now, and time is running out.

That, more than anything, is why this is a big game. It has little to do with the marketing or the exposure or the hype of Monday night. It has everything to do with the fact that after tonight, only three games remain in the regular season.

Carolina has been playing big games every week for some time now. Since the Detroit game and projecting ahead to the end, the Panthers will have played six straight games against playoff-caliber teams with playoff berths and seedings and sites at stake in every one.

This is the biggest yet, the biggest game played all season, the biggest in the city and division and the league. There have been bigger games here in years past, but not many. You have to go back to 2005 to find a good comparison to this one. The 9-3 Panthers played the 8-4 Bucs on Dec. 11, 2005 with everything riding on the outcome. Carolina lost 20-10 and wobbled through December as each game got bigger and bigger, and despite finishing 11-5 and winning two playoff games, the grind of playing on the road finally did the Panthers in on a long day in Seattle more than a month later.

That's what's riding on this game, not only the division lead but the games that follow and the playoffs after that. Win tonight, and Carolina controls its destiny. Lose this one, and the attention will shift to Tampa for the rest of the year, and the Panthers will have to fight for everything.

The trucks are here, and the media crush is on. The cameras have been set up in advance, the marketing machine finally humming to a halt and the rest of the NFL pausing to watch. This is the game of the year for everyone as television viewers will be reminded of over and over and over tonight.

And it is. Until next. And the next, and the next and the next ...

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com