This Is Just A Real Nice Surprise

...A real nice surprise.

By now you've heard the news, written your Pope in moral outrage over the news, gotten over it and have moved on to figuring out how you'll manage to watch the game and catch your son's role as "2nd Lobster" in your church's production of "Welcome, Everyone Who's Not Normally Here. Yes, We Still Kneel at Key Moments in the Mass. And Try To Remember All Those 2nd Offerings You've Missed This Year. And Yeah, We Know The Baby Jesus is an Elmo Doll. Sorry. Maybe if You Guys Would Go Forth and Propogate a Bit More..."

The Game starts at 8pm ET on Christmas Eve, meaning if your kid is a die-hard ND fan (and given the last 15 years, this is tenuous), Santa is going to have to stay up mighty late to put Chirstmas Gifts under the tree once he's asleep. No doubt your kid will want to stay up for the entire game, even if ND's up by double digits late in the game. You just never know.

This all shoots the plans you had for that La Perla package and your wife to hell, doesn't it?

Merry Christmas, Indeed.

Gotta say I wouldn't mind spending Christmas in Hawaii, or any other day of the year, for that matter. The only downside to the place is the $5 cans of coke, the way they treat milk like liquid gold, the propensity to put coconut in everything, and the plethora of broken down VW bugs scattered through paradise because shipping a broken down VW bug out of paradise isn't cost effective.

Speaking of not being cost effective, this may well be the most expensive recruiting trip in the history of college football, given that All-Universe Linebacker Manti T'eo lives in Hawaii. Of course, the Hawaii Bowl is played in Honolulu and Manti lives in Maui, so there's not even a guarantee that he'll be able to attend. I dunno. Maybe island hopping is a lot less expensive for the locals.

I don't really mind that the game is on Christmas Eve. I'll just TiVo it. I'll be too busy caroling (you read that right) and trying to get my kid to stay quiet for the entire 2 hour "Childrens Mass" to watch it live. And let's face it, every time I walk into La Perla I become too stupid to actually make a purchase. Their prices are outrageous anyway.

As for whether or not ND "deserves" to be in Hawaii for the holidays. No. They don't. But of the 68 teams that are in a bowl game, at best 12 actually "deserve" it. So I'm throwing this whole thing into the "why not us" bucket of life and just digging for scraps/tips on what staff changes will take place between now and September.