It’s the last Saturday before Christmas and you all know what that means. Four days until my live tweet of It’s A Wonderful Life!

In the meantime we’ve got the usual holiday crush of college hoops. This year Santa stuffed our stockings with something truly special — an expanded college football playoff. All those pigskin purists who warned a playoff would kill the regular season obviously have not been paying attention to March Madness all these years. I love that we are getting to watch today’s triple header but there is also another strong slate of hoops on tap, headlined by the CBS Sports Classic in Madison Square Garden (North Carolina v UCLA and Ohio State v Kentucky). If you leave your couch today you’re not doing it right.

The college hoops schedule will go light over the holidays, so enjoy today’s fare as it is being served up like so many cups of egg nog. Happy Saturday everyone, and as always Hoops HQ has you covered. —Seth

Today's Picks: Marquette at Xavier, UCLA vs. UNC, Purdue vs. Auburn and More

‘Tis the season to be watching. Along with the March Madnessesque football tripleheader coming our way today, we are also being treated to a fully loaded college basketball slate, headlined by the CBS Sports Classic in Madison Square Garden. Santa Claus is getting ready to bring you presents, but I will continue to bring you my prescience (see what I did there?). Happy watching – and betting.

Doug Gottlieb's Diary: My ‘Nobody U’ Controversy, the Twitter Beef and More

It just keeps getting better. As a perpetual optimist, whenever something has gone wrong with my team or we’ve been hit with bad luck, that’s what I tell my staff. And man, let me tell you… It just keeps getting better.

As you may have heard, our team has been on a losing streak and I’ve been at the center of some sports talk controversies this week. I can’t say I expected to be in a back-and-forth with an NFL insider, but hey, there have been a lot of unexpected twists during my first season at Green Bay.

In Case You Missed It

🏀 Inside the Big East: Is Georgetown for Real?

🏀 LSU Star Aneesah Morrow Had to Leave Chicago to Grow Up. She's Ready to Go Home Again.

🏀 Ken Pomeroy Crunched The Numbers And Changed The Game

No. 7 USC @ No. 4 UConn: JuJu Watkins. Paige Bueckers. Need we say more? Both these teams have star power, both are 10-1, and both have larger questions to answer in their pursuit of a title, as Eden Laase breaks down here. Let's get ready to rumble! 8:00 p.m. ET on FOX