Best of Yardbarker: Pregaming 'The Game'

If you aren't exhausted, you probably didn't do Thanksgiving right. Between the turkey and pumpkin pie, the NFL lucked out with some truly exciting games — well, at least in two of the three Turkey Day contests. From Sam Bradford throwing the game away to Darius Slay and the Detroit Lions to Dez Bryant and Josh Norman quite literally battling in the Cowboys' five-point win over the division-rival Redskins, there was more than enough to make up for the late blowout by the Steelers vs. the Luck-less Colts.

As bad as the Colts looked, they aren't among the 25 biggest sports turkeys of 2016: "The Oklahoma City Thunder crumbled when up 3-1 in the Western Conference Final against Golden State, but they didn’t have the best regular season ever. Instead of being considered the greatest team of all time and winning back to back titles, the Warriors now have to live with being one of the ultimate 'yeah, but' teams."

You know who else is a turkey? All of the NHL players we love to hate: "Brad Marchand and the only way I'll ever like the slew-footing Bruin is for him to give up the game of hockey and take up, I don't know, real-life Quidditch matches so I never have to hear his name again."

Another person deemed a turkey by US Soccer was Jurgen Klinsmann, who was fired from his role as U.S. Men's National Team manager and replaced by a familiar face. So what does Bruce Arena's re-hiring as USMNT manager mean going forward? "While Klinsmann may have failed in his ultimate ambition of changing the USMNT's reputation as a 'kick the ball deep and run really hard' team, the re-hiring of Bruce Arena for this cycle means that the federation is ready to embrace that rep again."

With the tryptophan beginning to leave everyone's system until we tackle all that leftover turkey, we can all relax Saturday with college football's rivalry week matchups, particularly by pregaming "The Game" between the Michigan Wolverines and Ohio State Buckeyes, a game that has huge College Football Playoff implications: "If there were ever a week to tailgate, this is it. No matter what team you root for, this promises to be a great week in the sport, from the Michigan-Ohio State game to the Iron Bowl to the fact that Notre Dame just had a whole mess of wins vacated."

Oh yes, it's also college basketball season, and if you're wondering how these millennial athletes get to class, Yardbarker asked some of the Pac-12's finest how they do just that.