Mike Bookey

On Christmas Eve, I – and my parents, siblings and our spouses – attended a football game in Seattle. The Seahawks were playing the 49ers in what was supposed to be a playoff-deciding matchup, so the family donned matching blue-and-green Santa hats (the too-cool-for-school 16-year-old hipster who lives inside of me cringed just a little bit), piled into the old man's SUV and arrived at a parking lot near the stadium precisely three hours prior to kick off.
In the time that preceded kickoff, I ingested the following: three bowls of chili, four pieces of cornbread, half a bag of Ruffles, five 16 oz. cans of Olympia beer and a bevy of other salty items. I didn't need any of this, which I realized about a third of the way up our Everest-like ascension to our surprisingly excellent seats. But, I had to eat and drink all that. We were at a big football game and I've long held dear to my heart the notion that all special sporting events are license to eat like a fat guy who really likes being fat and eating foods that will ensure he remains so.

The coach is named Shaka Smart?
When the first NCAA tournament brackets to ever feature 68 teams rolled out of office-owned printers across the country, no one looked at Virginia Commonwealth University's slot in a play-in game and thought, “Oh, they'll totally make it to the Final Four.” But somehow, this little-known team made it all the way there… and made it one of the most memorable college basketball seasons in recent memory.
Joe Pa… yeah you're old as hell, but come on!
Nothing was more ridiculous or disgusting as the details that continue to come out of State College, Penn., which was once known as home to Penn State, but will forever be associated with one of the most shocking moments in sports history.

Between last Saturday and January 9, there will be 35 college football contests, meaning that some 58 percent of all Division I FBS schools will engage in these holiday-season rituals. For some of the players, it's a dream come true. For others, this means that an otherwise perfect Christmas vacation has been ruined. But for fans, these season-ending contests are a necessity.
My research has left me without a solid explanation as to the etymology of the word “bowl” as it pertains to things other than the eating of soup, the rationing of marijuana and the rolling of heavy things by drunken Midwesterners. This will have to remain a mystery for the moment, but calling these games “bowls” is helpful for the weary holiday travelers who find themselves cordoned off for a week in a Christmas-tree-lit living room with people they see once a year, but are told are family. It's a “bowl” game. You have to watch it.

I just finished working out. It is three minutes past midnight and I'm in my basement.
I've been trying desperately to write something about how comic book-loving Robert Griffin III's Heisman win over the smiley face of Andrew Luck has a lot to do with the Occupy movement and the first three films of the Twilight
franchise, but have since realized that this is a horrible idea for a column. So I decided to get some exercise and planned on doing so without leaving my basement office.
While I'm reticent to discuss it at length with people who aren't already aware of my obsessive nature, I have been engaged for the past several months in a tumultuously unpredictable relationship with a certain exercise video series. The phrase “exercise video” might conjure images of Richard Simmons' (who I mistakenly have called Russell Simmons on no less than 50 occasions, an error with which the real Russell Simmons would hardly be pleased) piercing voice instructing you to perspire to the sounds of Buddy Holly, but the regimen that came into my life is nothing like that. In fact, it's not so much a work out video as it is a test of the human condition and/or vomit reflex and a routine that landed me in urgent care with unrelenting back pain. Yet, I continue to do it.