The Season of Ho Ho Ho and Who, Who, Who?

That there are 28 college football bowl games, one seemingly more obscure than the other, is something to applaud, according to Bob Wojnowski of the Detroit News.

“I still maintain one of America’s great holiday traditions is to be standing in a bar on, say, a Tuesday night, looking up at the TV and squinting to make out the uniforms,” Wojnowski wrote. “Then you turn to the person next to you and engage in cheerful conversation.

“You: ‘You know who’s playing?’

“Other person (looking up): ‘Uh, no.’

“I love that part.”

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Trivia time: The five “Friendlies” are the mascots for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. What do they represent?

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Wrapped and ready: The Miami Heat and Detroit Pistons won on Christmas Day, but apparently there’s a difference. “At this early point in the holiday season,” wrote the Miami Herald’s Dan LeBatard, “Miami appears to be the colorful ribbons and packaging while Detroit appears to be the bejeweled gift.”

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Boards or bored? Less impressed with the Pistons’ 85-70 victory over the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs was Peter Schmuck of the Baltimore Sun. “Because I’m not a big NBA fan,” he wrote, “it’s tough to get up for any game involving the Pistons that doesn’t degenerate into some kind of off-court melee.”

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Educated fish: A two-mouthed rainbow trout that fisherman Clarence Olberding pulled out of Lake Holmes near Lincoln, Neb., is headed for Harvard instead of Olberding’s dinner plate. James Lee, a research fellow at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, contacted Olberding after learning about the unusual catch.

Olberding cut the fish in two and froze both portions. The head will go on display at the museum, with Olberding getting credit for the catch and the donation. That’s one way to get into an Ivy League school.

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High and inside: Looking back on 2005, Newsday’s Jon Heyman said of New York Yankee pitcher Randy Johnson, “The year began with the Big Useless verbally shoving around a CBS-TV cameraman. It ended ... with every last member of the California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels shoving around Johnson. So in a sense the Angels did triumph over the devil.”

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Oh, fudge: Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star Tribune saw a positive in Minnesota’s 30-23 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday that knocked the Vikings out of playoff contention.

“Let’s face it,” Reusse wrote, “there are a few of us who could lose a couple of pounds, and now we can spend New Year’s Day eating fudge and telling ourselves, ‘Tomorrow, the diet starts,’ rather than fretting over the Vikings against the Bears.”

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Trivia answer: A panda, a Tibetan antelope, a swallow, a fish and the spirit of the Olympic flame.

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And finally: Noting that the refurbished Scottsdale (Ariz.) Stadium will have bulletproof ticket windows, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times observed, “They’re using the highest caliber of glass normally reserved for presidential limousines, the Hubble telescope and Joe Paterno’s glasses.”