THE DOG DAYS APPROACH

AND WE LOOK BACK WISTFULLY

By ActionCookbook@actioncookbook Jan 4, 2017, 11:03am EST

Another season of college football has nearly come and gone, with a frenetic holiday schedule of 41 major college bowls winding down to Monday’s final clash between the Clemson Tigers and the Alabama Crimson Tide for the College Football Playoff National Championship. It’s always a bittersweet time of year around here - the pinnacle of the sport, immediately followed by months and months of sad silence and misinterpreted bowl results. And although we’ve come to the end of the road-

Holly: If you start singing I’m calling the Humane Society

actioncookbook: oh, what luck! It's Holly, my much-more-appreciated alter ego and college football's number one Welsh Corgi analyst, probably, I don't know. How was your holiday season, Holly?

Holly: It was terrible.

actioncookbook: Now, that can’t be true. Didn’t you spend lots of time with family and eat lots of good food and get wonderful presents?

Holly: I didn’t get the one thing that I asked for.

actioncookbook: Holly, we discussed this. A “ham fountain” isn’t a thing.

Holly: oh, okay, but an “action cookbook” is, cool, so words just have no meaning, that’s great, good to know

actioncookbook: Can we just move on?

Holly: I’ve been trying but you keep taking down my Petfinder profiles. Let a girl live.

actioncookbook: listen, what did you think of the bowls this year?

Holly: I think there wasn’t enough damn ham in mine

actioncookbook: We have to monitor your weight, honey.

Holly: oh, sure, diet advice, that's what I'm looking for. I guess you would know, though, from your job as the Bowflex "Before" picture

actioncookbook: uh-oh

Holly: lookin’ like the mascot for a minor league baseball team whose mascot is an egg bagel

actioncookbook: do we have to start another year this way

Holly: witcha husband-in-a-CBS-sitcom ass face

actioncookbook: it takes a certain baseline attractiveness to be on TV at all, I’m taking that as a compliment regardless of how it was intended to be taken

Holly: looking like I caught you pouring milk into a tin of those Danish butter cookies and eating it like a bowl of cereal last week

actioncookbook: [laughing nervously] ha ha why I don't even where would you have come up with we agreed not to talk about that thing that didn't happen why am I still even typing this up

Holly: anyways, yeah, bowl season, I loved it, I think my favorite was Cincinnati’s bowl

actioncookbook: but Cincinnati didn't- oh.

Holly: listen, it’s okay. You scored as many points in your bowl game as Ohio State did in theirs. You can keep wearing that “bUCkeye State” shirt around the house when no one’s looking

actioncookbook: well, okay, let’s elaborate on this point - the top of the Big Ten had a rough bowl season, with big losses by Ohio State and Iowa, as well as narrower defeats by Michigan and Penn State, with only Wisconsin salvaging high-level success for the conference in their Cotton Bowl win over MAC power Western Michigan. What do you think we can interpret from this? Does Penn State's razor-thin loss to a hot USC team prove that the East is no longer a two-team race? Are Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh's plans for world domination not as far along as we might have thought? What do you think?

Holly: huh? Oh, geez. I heard “Big Ten” and stopped listening. Uhh, yeah, I think next year it’ll be won by that school with the fanbase with outsized expectations and an aggrandized sense of their school’s academic prestige. You know, that one.

actioncookbook: Let’s try a different approach. What was your favorite bowl game of the season?

Holly: The St. Petersburg Bowl.

actioncookbook: Okay, the St. P- wait, what? That game was terrible. A 5-7 team beat a 6-6 team in a low-scoring game marked by special teams miscues and glaringly wrong special teams decisions.

Holly: yep, and Air Bud’s team was a bunch of losers before they brought a dog in. Gives me hope that I’m going to coach in a bowl game soon. Plus, I feel like I could tear that Tropicana Field carpet up without much blowback.