Name: The Poinsettia Bowl. Presumably monikered to evoke Christmas imagery, since the bowl all but admits in its name that it will be played forever before Christmas, and not with the respectable adult bowls with matured pairs of horns, descended testicles, and fully grown earflaps that all get to play after the Christmas. It’ll just have to play on the outskirts and attempt to steal weak, sickly viewers like ourselves from the fray, since desperate, mainlining college football junkies will watch this just to stop the cruel spasms of withdrawal. Gimmeh. NOW. We’ll eat a Poinsettia if you’ll just let us watch a quarter.

Mitch Eats A Poinsettia - The best bloopers are here

Motto: No, we’re not the Holiday Bowl.

Fake Bowl? As in, owned by ESPN? No. The Poinsettia Bowl is a homegrown San Diego product, just like crystal meth, and just as electrifying. We’re exaggerating. Nothing’s as energizing as crystal meth, though in the Poinsettia Bowl’s defense the game will not steal your teeth, soul, and innocence like crystal meth will. So it’s got that going for it.

Tickets left? Sure. Grab yourself a family pack and watch the game laying down across four seats if you like.

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: The San Diego Credit Union strikes us as being too obvious a target, so check the sponsor’s page and find the Viejas Casino, a local moneypit managed by the Viejas Indian tribe. There’s all the glutton-fodder you’ll find at most casinos (2-for-1 prime rib! Yayyyyy!), but the outstanding entertainment is really what gets our dander up in the best of ways:

Past performers include Chris Isaak, Pat Benatar, Chicago, Al Jarreau, Billy Idol, Julio Iglesias, Kenny G, David Sanborn, Earth Wind and Fire, Gipsy Kings, Heart, Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam, LeAnn Rimes and many more.

The David Sanborn? Better avoid that show, as the searing riffs from the Lethal Weapon soundtracks will have us pulling the ampitheater off its foundations with our pickup truck while screaming “Your diplomatic immunity has just been revoked!” We may very well have that reaction anyway, since the additive effect of all that soft rock could trip you into a delusional state where you are convinced that you are about to have a tooth removed in a dentist’s office. And no one could blame you for the violence at that point, both thanks to dental trauma and the anger MOR format music provokes in us all.

Tradition Rating: Around since 2005, so roughly comparable in tradition to…EDSBS, baby!

Setup: Mountain West runner-up versus free agent, though that’s usually a military academy, as they’ve pulled Navy twice and Army once in the three years of their existence.

Location: San Diego. Anchorman jokes aside, it’s nicer than anywhere you’ll ever live, even if you already live in San Diego. Wrap the old mainframe around that, man.

Matchup quality: Entertaining: Navy will change little even though Paul Johnson’s off to Georgia Tech, and will run polysyllabic wonder Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada and the triple option. Utah…okay, it’s an hour to kickoff, and we don’t know anything about Utah. Nothing. So tune in, because in all probability, you don’t know anything, either. It’ll be a big learning experience for us all!

Ohio State loses a starting corner for the national title game, meaning you can crank up the “ESS-EEE-SEE Speed” argument when Early Doucet finds a mismatch and slips loose for a 60-yarder in the game, thus beginning one of the least intelligent arguments in the history of the sport.

OSU fan: Our starter was suspended! There was a fifty day layoff!

(Repeat until stupefied.)

Starting cornerback Donald Washington and backup Eugene Clifford will miss the game for “violating team rules,” a nod to likely academic problems and nothing of the Fulmer Cup variety. Redshirt freshman Chimdi Chekwa will start in his place, who LSU offensive coordinator is looking at as if he were a pork chop with legs.

Donald Washington: out for title game.

We walk around singing little songs in our head all day. For instance, one that’s haunted us for years has been the imaginary song “No Free Sex (for the chinese businessman)”. Get a Bee Gees/Jamiroquai hopstep playing in the background, a driving funk bass line, and sing this across the top in a disco falsetto and you’ve got the idea.

No free sex! For the Chi-nese business-mayun!
He’s got to pay! (He’s got to pay!)
He’s got to pay! (He’s got to pay!)
Every day (Every day)
Every day (Every day)

Repeat until funky, and you’ll get the idea. That particular one’s been playing in our heads for eight years, but that’s normal, right?

We do this far too often to be considered healthy, so we put down the mini-song that should be the 15 second theme song they play for the Poinsettia Bowl inbetween each break. Remember: it’s the Poinsettia Bowl. Do not let your pets eat it, or they will die.

MP3 File

I ain’t goin’ ta Atlanta. Thass a whole utha countrah!

It should surprise no one to find that Georgians do not like to travel–after all, why do you think the place got torched by the Union Army? Mostly because Georgians just kept sending notes to the Union Army reading “Hey, it’s cold out. Come on down here and we’ll tussle.” It’s also scientific fact that 42% of Georgia fans are fat white guys who only leave the confines of Gwinnett County to go to Georgia games and for heart surgery, so the immobility isn’t surprising.

What is surprising is seeing it quantified, especially in terms of mileage traveled.

Georgia has traveled a total of 358 miles for nonconference road games since 1998. By comparison, Hawaii has traveled 72,918 miles.

Not that Florida, or any other SEC team may complain about his, since Tom Tancredo himself envies the xenophobic tendencies fo the conference as a whole:

Teams from the Southeastern Conference hold down seven of the top eight spots for teams having traveled the fewest miles. This includes Florida, which last played a nonconference road game outside of the Sunshine State on Sept. 21, 1991, at Syracuse.

But there’s auslanders out there! And Jamba Juice stores, which we just know are a front for the homosexual atheist agenda! And also, more logically speaking, SEC teams can sit on their front porch and watch the money roll in without even getting their shoelaces dirty from hitting the road for longer than a few hours at a time.

(And go ahead and anthropomorphize the argument if you want, because you’re illogical and will do it anyway: SEC teams are skurred! They don’t want none! No, they just make shitloads of money shuffling around the block, and have no incentive to get wanderlust thanks to mountains of cash on the local circuit. Plus: strangers frighten and confuse us!)

Hawaii, however, has spent more time in the air than a John Kitna post route or Venus Williams’ buttocks.

Expect delays, as we are limping to the finish in a race to Christmas break. In the meantime, please enjoy the news that Florida assistant Doc Holliday has interviewed at West Virginia and has allegedly done very well despite being a fall-down drunken tubercular lunger with a penchant for fast women and high-stakes games of chance.

LSUFreek strikes again.