Wake up, shitheads! Time for you to get up, swallow 15 Advil, put your pants back on, and stagger home like the dirty, filthy people you are. Here are the bowl games you’ll need to nurse that hangover…

11AM Outback Bowl: South Carolina vs. Iowa (ESPN)
This is the one you’ll watch because nothing else is on and you just want the pain to subside.

1PM Capital One Bowl: Georgia vs. Michigan State (ABC disguised as ESPN)
Formerly the Citrus Bowl. As Steve Spurrier once said, you can’t spell Capital One Bowl without UGA! Or at least the A.

1PM Gator Bowl: Nebraska vs. Clemson (CBS)

4:30PM Rose Bowl: Penn State vs. USC (ABC disguised as ESPN)
Joe Paterno will be, once again, coaching from the booth. This way, you don’t have to see the colostomy bag.

8:30PM Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech vs. Cincinnati (FOX)
Jesus, this is the fucking Orange Bowl? Shouldn’t this be the Papajohns.com Bowl? Miami/Nebraska this ain’t. But hey, it’s New Year’s Day, and you’re one step away from grim death, so any real football will do now, won’t it?

Consider the comment section below your all day Hugh Johnson project. So sit back, mix up a Bloody Mary, find the greasiest breakfast you can, and enjoy the day. Happy 2009, gang.

Not only are the mothers, wives, and girlfriends of players and coaches not the least bit interesting, they are without fail, actively annoying. I believe they may even be contributing to the downfall of America. These reactions and replays need to stop.

The only good thing about them is that you occasionally get a golden one like this. Nothing beats seeing obnoxious fans (note the two at the top especially) raising their arms in triumph as the most accurate kicker in NCAA history attempts to win a bowl game—and then the dumbfounded look on their faces as they realize he pushed it a foot past the upright. It's the little things that make life worth living.

Of course, the Tigers went on to beat Northwestern in overtime, so there were still plenty more shots of Chase Daniel's family losing their Missouri-loving minds over a win in the freakin' Alamo Bowl. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything.

At one point this season, these two teams were a combined 3-11. Now they are a combined two games over .500, and playing the Papajohns.com Bowl—not the Papa John's Bowl; Papa John's dot com. Sure, it's on national television, but it started at 3:00 p.m. ET on a Monday afternoon. Today is not a holiday. Most of the Western world is either at work or on vacation, and if they're on vacation, they sure as hell better not be watching TV. I can't imagine either of these teams wants to be there or is happy about the way their season turned out. Their respective athletic departments will be lucky to break even on this one and no one, anywhere, wants to travel to Birmingham between Christmas and New Year's (or ever.) In other words, this is the horrible bowl game that gives horrible bowl games a bad name. No good will come of this.

On the other hand, ordering a hot, delicious pizza from the internet so that it can be delivered to your door without any human interaction is one of the greatest pleasures this life has to offer. Extra garlic butter, please!

PapaJohns.com Bowl Notebook [Birmingham News]
N.C. State-Rutgers Preview [ESPN]
Missouri, Northwestern get set for Alamo Bowl [Houston Chronicle]

OK, so the price tag is a little high:

Organizers will seek a corporate title sponsor who likely will pay between $350,000 and $500,000 a year for the exposure that comes with the bowl.

Hey, that ain't THAT much! Somewhere, someone, some crazy rich human out there has to be willing to pony up a vanity cash grab to get their name on a bowl game. After all, it features teams from the Big East and Conference USA! If no enterprising blog steps up, we need a wild rich human. They have to be out there. We desperately want to see a haroldhamberson.blogspot.com Bowl. Badly.

THE EDSBS Bowl: Let's Ride [EDSBS]

Now that they're all done, we wanted to congratulate "R. Adamson," whoever that is, for winning our Bowlmania group. Mr./Ms. Adamson should email us to collect their "prize." Picking up 28 of the 32 bowl games ... that's impressive. And sad, really.

Insanity At Its Finest [The Wizard Of Odds]

• It's a depressing, sad label, but it's clear Hawaii's Colt Brennan now owns it: The elite club of "system quarterback." Timmy Chang, Andre Ware, David Klingler ... the more the merrier! Georgia-USC would have been the best game, obviously; Illinois-Hawaii might have been fun too.

• The most entertaining game of the day, without question, was the Michigan-Florida game. It seems weird to see Lloyd Carr carried off the field that way, though, like he's Bear Bryant or something. Maybe if he would have coached as balls-out the rest of his Michigan career as he did yesterday, he might have won a few more bowl games.

• Big Ten check-in: 3-4 in their bowl games, with the BCS title game still coming up. Not as bad as you might have feared, but when you consider the Big Ten hasn't won a Rose Bowl in eight years now ... yipes.

• It's possible that Missouri's win yesterday won't push them up in any polls at all; they're not gonna gain on Georgia or USC, and they were already ahead of Hawaii and Illinois. They're probably a preseason top five team, by the way, and they play Illinois (probably a top 15 team) in the season opener.

• After yesterday, we will confess, our fervor for Oklahoma-West Virginia tonight is, well, minimal. We suspect this is normal.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that some of these bowl guys are raking in nearly $500 grand.

In 2002, Gary Cavalli earned $90,000 as executive of a new postseason game in San Francisco. In 2006, his compensation package was $362,018 for the game now called the Emerald Bowl. "Frankly, my compensation package is none of your business," Cavalli said.

Cavalli is not alone. From 2001-05, compensation packages for bowl game executives have increased about 70%, with many of them more than doubling, according to an examination of the bowls' Internal Revenue Service records. The Outback Bowl's Jim McVay earns about $490,000, more than double the salary for the CEO of the oldest bowl, the Rose Bowl ($239,807).

Mama always told us to ditch this writing game and become a representative of the Emerald Bowl. We just didn't listen.

Bowling For Dollars [The Wizard Of Odds]