"I shouldn't have eaten that 2nd hot dog..."

It’s College Game Day. Do you know what that means?

For most college guys out there, it means it’s the best day of the week and college football has arrived! It means tailgating, day drinking, cheerleaders, phenomenal food, and most importantly: field goals, sacks, tackles, and touchdowns.

There are a lot of girls who wake up on Game Day just as excited as the boys for the glory that is college football. These football girls know their team, their key players, their opponents, their weaknesses, and also, most likely, who the hottest players are.

Not one of these girls? Well, you can be. Football fanatic or not, here’s some tips every college girl should know to be prepared for game day.

Wear your team colors: The cardinal rule to football fans everywhere and the first step to supporting your team! Want be a football fashionista? Don’t pick up a cutsie pink version of your college t-shirt; rock your school colors in style. Most school stores carry stickers/face paint of your college letters and now even Victoria’s Secret has a whole college line!

ESPN is like Perez Hilton, But Cooler: Seriously, ESPN online is the home of college football. It’s complete with player bios, schedules, rankings, blogs, videos, and pictures (of all those hot wide receivers). You’ll always know the latest news about your team and impress the boys with your football smarts and stats. Plus, ESPN online has a college football blog that’s awesome (not as addicting and fabulous as CollegeCandy, of course, but close)!

Tailgate, tailgate, tailgate: Game day isn’t the same without traditional tailgate food like burgers, chips and guac (yum!), pre-game radio, and booze. Just a warning: pace yourself wisely. You want to be able to actually watch the game (unlike that one time I passed out before kickoff…).

Scream, Yell, or Yodle but Please Don’t Cheer: There is a cheerleading team for a reason, and unless you’re on it, don’t scream out cutesy rhyming cheers. Yelling at the refs for bad calls? Go for it. Yelling for your team to pick it up? Acceptable. High-fiving and screaming after a 75-yard run for a touchdown. Obviously. But rah-rahing to be aggressive, be be aggressive? No thanks.

Bring The Tailgate Into the Stadium: One of the perks about being a female while entering a college stadium? Security can’t pat down near your goods. Yes, they can check your purse to see if you tried to bring in the booze, but they can’t check a flask taped to your upper thigh or your binoculars, and definitely not your bra. Just sayin…

Wear Sunscreen: All that booze school spirit sometimes makes you forget that you’re spending a good 6 hours in the sun. Slather on the SPF before you leave the house so you don’t end up rocking raccoon eyes for the rest of the week.

If Everyone Else is Cheering…Cheer! Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all the rules of football and that’s OK. Just pay attention, cheer when everyone else cheers and eventually you’ll figure it all out. Oh and if you’re little, be prepared to be tossed in the air.

However, there are several things I should consider pledging as the ball drops. Whether you’re stuck on your own resolution, or just need a fresh start with the new year, the following are some resolutions that many of us should consider.

1. I will go to the gym regularly.

When 2008 struck, I was on a regular gym regime, and resolved to keep at it and lose ten more pounds. I did. Then summer hit, and I found that poolside cocktails and outdoor keg parties were taking their toll on my thighs. The fact that this semester has been excruciating contributes to my lack of gym time, and isn’t helping my quest to tone up. Losing weight and getting in shape is one of the most common New Years resolutions, but it’s also one of the hardest to keep. Still, if you have taken to wearing sweats to class every day because you can’t zip up the skinny jeans you bought in August, you may want to give the gym a go next year.

2. I will quit drunk dialing/drunk texting/ drunk Facebooking.

Waking up in the morning and being surprised by your call log is not a good thing. And being drunk on Facebook means that you can send messages, write inappropriate things on peoples’ walls, create ridiculous drunken status messages, and now even drunk FB-Chat someone. Yikes! If you have consistently getting texts on Sunday mornings from random people saying, “WTF?” you may want to leave the phone at home and turn off your computer before you go to the bar.

3. I will do my homework in advance.

Most college students deserve a minor (or a double major) in procrastination. We blow off our assignments until the last minute, then freak out, plow through a paper, and turn it in while it’s still warm from the printer. The problems with this practice are that A) stressing ourselves out is unhealthy; B) we often let the window of remaining time shrink with each assignment, until we are trying to pound through six chapters of Philosophy on the walk to a midterm; C) procrastination doesn’t leave room for revision; and D) when we leave things until the last minute, a printer problem can be detrimental. Trying to put school assignments before bar nights is a good way to make the grade this spring.

4. I will not let my boss light shots of Sambuca on fire in my mouth at the bar.

What? Is that just me?

5. I will wash my sheets more than once a month.

If you’re in a dorm with bunkbeds or lofted beds, changing your sheets is a pain in the ass. Besides, between balancing a class schedule, an active social life, and a part-time job, who has time to take off the pillowcases and lug your comforter to the laundry room? Hey, if you knew what lurks between dirty sheets, you will make time.

6. I will only choose one “main course” at the dining hall.

Not piling chicken parm pizza, macaroni and cheese, and mashed potatoes on your plate can take a lot more will-power than you’d think, especially after five back-to-back classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays (gotta love block scheduling and four-day-weekends). Still… just because the dining hall is free, doesn’t mean you need to load up every day.

7. I will remain composed when my basketball team plays our rivals, even when the other team is up two points with fifteen seconds to go in the game and the ref isn’t calling any of their fouls.

Perhaps if you are making this resolution, you will also want to promise yourself not to get into altercations with a fan after the game. I’m from UConn, and there were many heated moments at Syracuse games that stain my past. I still get tingles of rage when someone mentions the name “Gerry McNamara.” But hey, I’m working on it.

8. I will only have sex sober in 2009.

That’s a good one if you’ve been letting Captain Morgan influence your libido lately. The guy at the bar putting all of your drinks on his tab might not be too happy about it, but this one will save you from the walk of shame when March comes in like a lion.

9. I won’t swear and say I hate my school the next time I can’t get the required courses for my major, or I fail a class because my TA doesn’t speak English, or financial aid decides to rape me in the arse.

Because, come on. Even though every semester, something is bound to come up to “ruin your life” for the time being, at the end of the day, when you’re with your bestests at happy hour, reminiscing about “the time when….” you know that you really love your school. Otherwise, you would have transferred months ago.

10. I will be a moral, upstanding citizen.

Yeah, if anyone can give me some tips on that one, I’d really appreciate it. Although I did give some beggars on the New York subway a few quarters the other day, so maybe there’s hope after all.

7 a.m.: Wake up. Still drunk from the bar last night? Mayyyybe.

9 a.m.: Arrive at the football stadium; crack your first beer.

9 a.m.-Noon: Tailgate your face off. Tailgating activities may or may not include: Beer pong, funneling, shotgunning, and general raging.

Noon: Kickoff. You’re highly buzzed, but still careful not to spill your overpriced stadium beer as you shake your foam finger at the other team.

7 p.m.: You pass out. Hey, it was a long day, man.

Now that’s what I call a waste of a Saturday night. I know that rallying for almost 12 hours straight can take its toll. Especially when you’re running on a few hours of sleep after a killer Friday night. But if you pace yourself, and plan your evening effectively, there’s no reason that you can’t take in both the football game and a killer kegger (or two).

1. Don’t Chug, Chill.

Get too drunk too quickly, and you’re likely to pass out before halftime, let alone make it till midnight. Tailgating festivities often require heavy drinking, so if you find yourself partaking in a shotgun contest, follow the beer with a water. Spreading out your alcohol intake will allow you to last longer. Afterall, following a tailgate with a party is like a party marathon. And don’t they tell marathon runners to pace themselves so they can make it to the finish line? Oh, the things college kids could learn from athletes.

2. Counteract with Caffeine.

Pound a Redbull on the way to the game, or start your bar night with a vodka and Redbull. Still chilly in your student section hoodie? Bring a thermos of coffee to the tailgate…then spike it with Bailey’s. Yum! Even if you’re really tired, however, monitor your caffeine intake. One or two cups of coffee or one energy drink should get you through the day.

3. Keep the Adrenaline Pumping.

If the excitement level declines, you’re energy is bound to follow suit. Your adrenaline is rushing as you cheer on your football team, and then you lose momentum in the downtime between the game and the party. Arrange a rowdy post-game dinner of wings and pizza with your fellow tailgaters, so you can recount all the great plays. It’ll keep you pumped, and you won’t even realize how much time has passed between your first beer and your last shot. Then, when you get to the party, keep yourself going by chatting up a hottie or signing up to be on the first beer pong team.

4. Steam Up Your Second Wind.

You’ve been up for hours, hanging out in the cold (and possibly rainy) weather. Beer is seeping out your pours. Take a long, hot, steamy shower. The hot water will wake you up and make you feel clean and ready to go again. Besides, staying fresh and clean might also help stave off the germs that’ll take their toll in flu form come Monday. AND you can always chug a beer in between shampooing and conditioning.

5. Powernap…Before it’s Too Late.

Positive you’re not going to make it? Throw in the towel early, and salvage the rest of your night. Taking a nap at 5 or 6 leaves plenty of time to sober up, recharge, and get ready to rage. If you keep drinking and try to make it to the post-party kickoff, you might crash at 9 or 10, only to sleep through the night and kick yourself in the a.m.

The patient du jour was a dude who collapsed during a protest and who appeared to have no major symptoms other than occasional fainting spells. House, however, usurped the patient with the theory that his niceness (yes, NICENESS) was a symptom of a more serious illness.

After a bunch of tests, the team found out that the guy had neurosyphilis and that the condition was supposedly affecting his brain. Kutner also tested a vial of “House’s” blood that he found lying around and discovered that House had syphilis. Long story short: House planted the blood so he could pretend to get nicer with treatment and make the team believe that his initial opinion of niceness being a defect was correct.

Whew! If that’s all a little confusing, let’s get simple: the dirt in this episode was that Cameron once slept with House (at least, it was strongly implied). Chase is pissed with Cameron (rightly) because she’s now putting him at risk of catching an STD, so there’s some major drama going on there.

In other news, House was sick of never seeing Wilson, so he worked out a visitation schedule with Amber. If you’ve seen the show, you can imagine how well that worked. Wilson was too passive-aggressive to choose sides, so House and Amber ended in a deadlock that probably won’t ever be broken.

All in all, I’d say the episode was valuable just for the tantalizing idea that Cameron and House slept together and the marginally entertaining thread of sarcastic performance reviews, so catch the full episode on Fox’s Web site if you missed it.  If not…eh.

Maybe the writers will have really warmed up by next week.

In a complete anomaly of the writers’ strike, House was a new episode this Tuesday and will be new AGAIN (!) next week.

Aside from the weird feeling I got from watching a Christmas-themed episode when it wasn’t actually Christmastime, I thoroughly enjoyed watching House get his Scrooge on.

Since no one actually watches the episodes for the “medical mysteries” that make up the plotlines, I’m going to jump right in to making commentary about the new medical team.

Taub: It’s still kind of an enigma to me why this dude is on the show, to be honest. As an actor, he doesn’t impress me much, and as a character, he impresses me even less. I mean, what is his purpose? What is House going to do with a middle-aged plastic surgeon? My guess is he’ll develop some kind of illicit relationship with Thirteen.

Thirteen: Thirteen is obviously the new Cameron, but I’m not sure I like her as much. She seems to have less attitude (although I did do a little cheer for her in this episode when she slammed House’s laptop closed in his face). Maybe she just annoys me so much because she is both gorgeous and too smart for her own good.

Kutner: Aside from the fact that I think Kal Penn is smoking hot, Kutner is my favorite doctor of the new crew. He’s sassy, he’s intelligent in a really sexy way, and I can see him giving House some major trouble in the future, which always makes for good TV.

So, hopefully the season will begin to pick up again now that the Contest that Wouldn’t End has finally ended. I still prefer Chase (oh, that accent), Cameron, and Foreman to the new team, but…only time will tell.