It's the holiday season. Perhaps you tried your luck with Cyber Monday deals earlier this week. Maybe you acted like Punxsutawney Phil and poked your head out on Black Friday just long enough to see a crowd before retreating back inside your den for six more weeks of watching football. But more than likely, if you're reading this column, you've been too busy with college football, the NFL and the start of the NHL, NBA and college basketball seasons to really have noticed. You're just now recognizing the calendar has flipped to December. You find yourself frantically staring at a countdown to Christmas and desperately in need of gift ideas to jump-start your holiday shopping. Or maybe you're staring at this page because the sports fans in your life have been too busy watching their fifth basketball game of the week on ESPN to read the newspaper. That means they've probably been too busy to fill out holiday shopping lists telling you what they want. Fret not, faithful reader. The Sports Guy is here and he's got your back covered. Yours truly scoured the Internet in search of gift ideas for sports fans of all sizes and ages. Here's a smattering of the more peculiar recommendations: •‘The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything' — Even couch potatoes need reading material during commercial breaks and between kitchen runs for more chips and salsa. This book purportedly takes the Mother Lode of all sporting events —the NCAA basketball tournament — and applies the same concept to various cultural questions. See how a bracket of the top 64 movies of all time fared in head-to-head competition and argue about the Final Four. Pick the right topic and you might even find conversation steered away from sports for a few minutes. Incidentally, people who liked this book also apparently like the title “101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die.” Apparently there were too many to fit on a 64-slot bracket? • We all know golfers who are a tad, shall we say, overzealous when it comes to the game. Share your addiction fears by writing them a “parscription.” For a modest fee, your golfaholic will receive an orange-brown oversized medicine bottle filled with six golf balls and a personalized prescription label for whatever ails them — chronic bogeys, perhaps? — signed by Dr. Myrtle Beach. • Customized M&Ms —Those delicious candy coated chocolates that you've gone crazy over since childhood? They apparently now come customized with the logo of your favorite sports team on them. I'm not quite clear if the idea here is to order your favorite team or if you're supposed to order ones bearing the logo of your hated rival so that you can, as cheerleaders have urged for decades, “eat ‘em up, eat ‘em up, rah, rah, rah!” • The Lebron James Transformer — Kids love action figures. Kids love robots. Kids love things you can change. Presumably, this toy does all three. Then again, it might just have a button that changes the jersey from Cleveland to Miami. • The Soccer Guys set —Advertised with a price of $25, this one appears to be a bargain. For your money you get “two soccer teams, referee, field, soccer ball and goals.” Where was this a year ago when Northwest College was trying to add a sports program on the cheap? Then again, you could always just fall back on the tried and true sports apparel, a larger television set for us to watch the game on, or a nice comfy recliner to view the action from.

It's the holiday season. Perhaps you tried your luck with Cyber Monday deals earlier this week. Maybe you acted like Punxsutawney Phil and poked your head out on Black Friday just long enough to see a crowd before retreating back inside your den for six more weeks of watching football.

But more than likely, if you're reading this column, you've been too busy with college football, the NFL and the start of the NHL, NBA and college basketball seasons to really have noticed. You're just now recognizing the calendar has flipped to December. You find yourself frantically staring at a countdown to Christmas and desperately in need of gift ideas to jump-start your holiday shopping.

Or maybe you're staring at this page because the sports fans in your life have been too busy watching their fifth basketball game of the week on ESPN to read the newspaper. That means they've probably been too busy to fill out holiday shopping lists telling you what they want.

Fret not, faithful reader. The Sports Guy is here and he's got your back covered.

Yours truly scoured the Internet in search of gift ideas for sports fans of all sizes and ages. Here's a smattering of the more peculiar recommendations:

•‘The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything' — Even couch potatoes need reading material during commercial breaks and between kitchen runs for more chips and salsa. This book purportedly takes the Mother Lode of all sporting events —the NCAA basketball tournament — and applies the same concept to various cultural questions. See how a bracket of the top 64 movies of all time fared in head-to-head competition and argue about the Final Four. Pick the right topic and you might even find conversation steered away from sports for a few minutes.

Incidentally, people who liked this book also apparently like the title “101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die.” Apparently there were too many to fit on a 64-slot bracket?

• We all know golfers who are a tad, shall we say, overzealous when it comes to the game. Share your addiction fears by writing them a “parscription.” For a modest fee, your golfaholic will receive an orange-brown oversized medicine bottle filled with six golf balls and a personalized prescription label for whatever ails them — chronic bogeys, perhaps? — signed by Dr. Myrtle Beach.

• Customized M&Ms —Those delicious candy coated chocolates that you've gone crazy over since childhood? They apparently now come customized with the logo of your favorite sports team on them. I'm not quite clear if the idea here is to order your favorite team or if you're supposed to order ones bearing the logo of your hated rival so that you can, as cheerleaders have urged for decades, “eat ‘em up, eat ‘em up, rah, rah, rah!”

• The Lebron James Transformer — Kids love action figures. Kids love robots. Kids love things you can change. Presumably, this toy does all three. Then again, it might just have a button that changes the jersey from Cleveland to Miami.

• The Soccer Guys set —Advertised with a price of $25, this one appears to be a bargain. For your money you get “two soccer teams, referee, field, soccer ball and goals.” Where was this a year ago when Northwest College was trying to add a sports program on the cheap?

Then again, you could always just fall back on the tried and true sports apparel, a larger television set for us to watch the game on, or a nice comfy recliner to view the action from.