We’ll be hitting the road tomorrow, which means we’ll be off the radar ’til the 26th. Intermittent bowl previews will be posted in the meantime.

Happy holidays to you all. Our present to you? This picture of what will likely happen at the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl: Dennis Erickson, driving a golf cart into a volcano after a long round of “golf” on Christmas.

Take care.

Meli Kalikimaka. The goddess Pele’s Christmas gift from us? Dennis Erickson on a golf cart.

Name: R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, propped into existence by ESPN, a.ka. the ESPN2 Bowl Version 1.0

Motto: “There’s No Place Like Dome!” Marketing fees for that slogan: $35,000 dollars, payable in cash, money order, or bars of platinum, which is probably what New Orleans-type Master P would pay them in if he’s behind all of this. It’s a slogan to make you say UGGHHHHHH!!!

The fee for the marketing department’s use of Microsoft Paint, btw, will be too expensive no matter what it is:

And…there. That’ll be $7,000, please.

Fake Bowl? You betcha, hatched entirely by ESPN2 with the sponsorship of a trucking company and, to our eye, no other visible local sponsors. (They probably attempted to reach FEMA, but got a message saying they’d return their call in three to forty days or so.)

Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: R and L Carriers, truckers extraordinaire. It’s a sure sign of antiglamour when the sponsor’s name has to be looked up, but it’s even better when you find out they’re being swindled and bragging about it. From their corporate history:

R+L CARRIERS now serves a total of 49 states plus Canada, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Umm..yeah. That road to Puerto Rico is a rough one. Driven it plenty of times. Someone’s pulling the wool over your eyes, R and L! Hornswaggling you! Bamboozling you! And you’re bragging about it on your website! You can’t drive to Puerto Rico! Or the Dominican Republic!

Whatever. We couldn’t care less. Let us know when you get that sweet cargo route to Fiji. That’s how you ended up being the front for the ESPN2 Bowl version 1.0.

Morons.

Tradition Rating: In effect since 2001, making it a hoary, venerable fake of a bowl in comparison to greenhorn games like the Poinsettia Bowl. (But still fake.) 2001 was a poopy year for us, but at least we learned that Coldplay existed, since we were jonesing for something like Radiohead, but without balls or single points of musical interest. Which was just great, man. Tradition rating: Coldplaytastic.

Setup: Conference USA versus Sun Belt. (crickets. tumbleweeds….)

FEEL THE VIBRATION!!!

Location. New Orleans, who desperately needs the business and attention a bowl game can provide since Katrina took eighty years off the city’s civilization progress rating. The only bonus is that after years of only hinting at exotic danger and decay, New Orleans may present the offer of legitimately intimidating decay and alleged danger, though how much danger lurks in the still depopulated city is debateable.

New Orleans: funny with fangs.

Matchup quality: Butt chops? Short ribs? Tripe? Somewhere in between? In the quest to evenly space out the remaining dribs and drabs of the college football season, ESPN has cobbled together this matchup of two teams with the pulling power of one of those shitty toy hovercrafts from the back of Boy’s Life: two 7-5 teams, Rice and Troy, fighting it out in the dingy hollows of the Superdome on ESPN.

(Frankly, even the gift bag sucks. An Aeropostale jacket? Has “Dick in a box” made Color Me Badd retro cool again? And “Noise suppressing headphones”? How about just telling the players half of them are going to end up working with heavy machinery the rest of their lives, eh?)

Both teams do have some minor degree of intrigue about them, though. “Plucky” Troy (mandatory modifier whenever talking about Sun Belt team) played Georgia Tech and Florida State respectably before going on a bender through the conference, winning the Sun Belt in a comeback against the MTSU Blue Raiders. The defense will be soup-strainer solid, but the offense features Omar Haugabook, who in addition to having a great name ain’t bad under center. (He certainly can take a hit, since Georgia Tech and Florida State both tattooed him every third play or so, to the point where we feared for his frontal lobes in those games.)

Rice went 7-5, an underacknowledged accomplishment coach Todd Graham deserves huzzahs and hip-hips for. Capital work, sir. It helps to have Major Applewhite in the embryonic stages of his likely illustrious coaching career hitting the d-pad for your offense. Prior to his arrival, Rice’s offense lolled in the bottom ten in the country. They improved exponentially this season: wide receiver Jarrett Dillard had 20 td receptions by himself.

What to watch for: Jarrett Dillard, who could do bad things against Troy. The upsell on this game is the potential for bowl season’s first real shootout, since neither Rice nor Troy seems to pay much attention to stopping anyone, or even really holding serve. We’ll be the over here and wager on the first real contest of the bowl season, since the trunkings of both NIU and Oregon in the prior two bowls constitute a trend we’d like to will out of existence. Troy and Rice gleefully burn off the etoufee weight in a track meet Rice eventually wins by a score of 41-38ish.

As Orson often points out, Tampa has more than its fair share of temptations which can cause college athletes and fans to get into more trouble than they were looking for. As a public service to our readers, we want to inform you of another victim of Tampa’s seedy side, Ms. Nevada Katie Rees, who partied a bit too hard in Tampa and took ill advised photos. They have now surfaced and she has been fired from her Ms. Nevada position.

And yet she looks so wholesome.

Not that we think any of you are interested, but you can see a sampling of these photos here. Discretion should be advised, but they are already censored a bit so you won’t be too shocked.

Mary Lakes, Reggie Nelson mother who has been in a battle with breast cancer since 2003, died Thursday night . We our certain that any words we might attempt would be inadequate for Mr. Nelson but our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family. May she rest in peace.

A bowl sponsored by a flat-screen television just begs for one team to come out in similar fashion: flat, overpriced, and showing it all in crystalline clarity. Oregon did just that last night in the Pioneer Purevision Las Vegas Bowl, losing 38-8 to a clearly furious BYU team. Mormons, despite what you might hear, are not nice: they vented a missionary’s rage on the Ducks, who looked like they rolled off the bus after a single fifteen minute pregame meeting for preparation, whipping the Ducks into a smooth, even confit by halftime and snacking on the remainders for the whole of the second half.

Mmm. Confit.

That fifteen minute meeting must have gone something like this:

1. Hey, guys. Ugly-ass helmets. Play like you don’t ever wanna wear ‘em again.

2. We’re gonna jerk around quarterbacks, too, because Crowton totally left his playbook at the hotel. Plays will be relayed in via text message, so keep your phone on you at all times.

3. We just found out you can’t carry a cellphone on the field. Um…check with me, aight?

4. Ryan Leaf’s in the building, and he’s watching. Make him proud, Brady.

5. Again: ugly-ass helmets, over there. Play the way they make you feel, boys.

Bellotti needs to rekindle his late 90s magic by regrowing the mustache. Like Sampson and his locks, Bellotti’s coaching strength has waned with each year since parting ways with his donut duster. (And Jeff Tedford, former Oregon OC. But enough with that-it’s obviously the mustache that caused his and the Ducks’ minidecline.) Oregon never defended a single crossing pattern, never strung together a single meaningful drive on offense, and looked all night like a team praying for death. Their only touchdown came on a heave and hope late in the game, which BYU-living to win-answered with a touchdown.

Credit ESPN, though: they provisioned for a blowout well. In fact, if Musberger serves any purpose in life besides hyperbole factory, it’s as blowout facilitator. The second half, rendered meaningless by Oregon’s vacation of will to live and the hitting of the ugly button, featured Musberger reeling through a bizarre grab bag of Vegas celebrities, outmoded highlights, and freewheeling bullshit sessions with Craig James. The Tarkanian interview was great enough, as was a surreal interview with Ryan Leaf.

The crowning killtime moment came when the second-tier blowout filler arrived: Craig James SMU highlights. Banter about tearoff jerseys rapidly devolved into this:

James: You know, those guys in the SEC would run through fifteen jerseys a game.

Davie: Well, back then, with the budgets teams had, you could do that.

Musberger: Of course, the budget down at SMU was bigger than most, right Craig?

James: (giggles) Uh, well, um…

Musberger: I mean, you guys had everything you wanted down there. Cash wasn’t a problem.

James: (full-on laughing) Um…yeah, but but but….

Musberger: I mean, you were snuffling like a hungry sow at the trough of one of the most corrupt football programs ever, right? SNUF SNUF PIGGY PIGGY OINK! Right, Craig?

Sherriff Brent will get you through this blowout, sweetcakes.

Actually, Musberger did not say that last line. The rest is fairly approximate, though. Bob Davie could only sit in his camel hair jacket and watch as Musberger dared someone to put the Brent express back on the rails. Fortunately no one did; had someone actually intervened, we’d have had to pay more attention to Oregon getting Rochambeaued by a BYU team playing like blood-doped convicts on parole. And after a half and a quarter of that, we’d seen enough.