Everybody knows that one of the best parts of being a sports fan is debating and dissecting the most (and least) important questions in the sporting world with your friends. So, we’re bringing that to the pages of LGHL with our favorite head-to-head column: You’re Nuts.

In You’re Nuts, two LGHL staff members will take differing sides of one question and argue their opinions passionately. Then, in the end, it’s up to you to determine who’s right and who’s nuts.

Today’s Question: What new holiday tradition should Ohio State fans embrace?

Jami’s Take: The Great Buckeye Bake-Off

Many of my family holiday traditions revolve around college football, and ergo, the Buckeyes are a big part of our long-standing rituals.

This year, we’ll spend New Year’s Day in our pajamas snacking on appetizers and making homemade Buckeyes for the Rose Bowl. My dad and I always make traditional Croatian sausage for the Ohio State bowl game, so the year of the Bowl ban really messed with our mojo.

But because my family is also hyper-competitive (all the best Buckeye fans are, baby!) and because we’re trying to lay low this year thanks to the ongoing pandemic, we have decided to introduce a new tradition that I feel you should all take part in as well.

I present to you: The Great Buckeye Bake-Off.

For those who might be unfamiliar, the “Great British Bake-Off is a popular” baking competition show, in which each week has a different theme (Bread Week, Cake Week, etc.). Each episode has three rounds.

First is the Signature Bake. Bakers show off their tried-and-true recipes for the week’s theme and often incorporate family favorites into this round. These are bakes they might prepare for family and friends regularly, and they are able to practice in advance.

The second round is the Technical Challenge. For this round, the judges choose the recipe. The bakers do not know what they will be making in advance, and they all prepare the same recipe, which is usually minimal at best. For example, the recipe might simply say, “Make the dough” without instructions on how to actually do so.

The third round is the Showstopper. Bakers create elaborate bakes, which are judged on flavor as well as design and appearance. This is the round where they really get to show off a multitude of baking skills.

Our version of this show will still contain three rounds, but we’ve adapted them to fit our family and incorporate the Buckeyes. In the interest of full disclosure, we are all pretty good bakers, but we generally lack “finesse” as the judges would call it — meaning whatever we make will taste delightful, but it might also be looking a mess.

For the Signature Bake, we will be preparing a Christmas cookie of our choice. I’ll be making my grandma’s chocolate crinkle cookies, and I will certainly be the favorite at the end of this round (partially because I don’t like to lose and partially because I have perfected this recipe enough that sometimes my grandma would have me make the cookies and would peddle them as hers).

For the Technical Challenge, we will be preparing a Buckeye Donut (a donut with chocolate frosting and a peanut butter center). The recipe will include basic instructions for making a donut, chocolate frosting, and peanut butter filling (written by a dear friend of mine), but good luck to all of us on deep frying these donuts and piping this peanut butter filling! Best case scenario, we’ll have something vaguely edible. Worst case scenario, we’ll have some good laughs at our incompetence.

For the Showstopper, we are being tasked with building our favorite spot on campus out of gingerbread. I fully intended to attempt the ‘Shoe, but let’s be honest, I am not that skilled, and someone else will likely attempt and fail at this. Instead, I plan to construct Mirror Lake, with teeny tiny gingerbread Me jumping in! Four Lokos sold separately.

Of course, the three rounds could be adapted to fit your family and your traditions, and it could also be a great Zoom activity with old college friends (though you unfortunately won’t be able to taste each other’s baked goods). But regardless of how you break down the rounds, it’s a fun way to spend time together and incorporate Ohio State into your holiday traditions!

No matter what you’re baking this year, wishing you all a very Happy Holidays! Go Bucks!

Matt’s Take: Festi-Brutus... no, wait. Maybe Brutivus? I don’t know yet, I’m still workshopping the name.

See, Jami is cheating with this one. She knows of my deep and unabiding love for all things “Great British Baking Show.”

However, putting my love for the greatest, sweetest, most wholesome programming on television aside, my suggested new holiday tradition actually also draws inspiration from a beloved television show, “Seinfeld.”

The holiday called Festivus, which was created in a 1997 episode of the sitcom about nothing, is now almost assuredly as well-known as many actually holidays. Therefore, I figured that it was time that as Ohio State fans, we put our own spin on the extravaganza — or at least one specific aspect of it. So in my newly imagined holiday, Brutivus (I don’t know, that doesn’t really roll off the tongue, do you have a better suggestion?) I am focusing on the always cathartic airing of grievances.

So, in this proposed holiday tradition, Buckeye fans would commune both physically and digitally on a given day — perhaps Festivus Eve, Dec. 22 — and they would take that opportunity to get all of the shit off of their chests that has been bothering them about Ohio State football, basketball, hockey, wrestling, volleyball, softball, baseball, whatever.

They can air their Buckeye grievances in a safe space with likeminded fans who understand where they are coming from and the passion that all Ohio State fans hold in their hearts without having to have the prying eyes of outsiders seeing and ridiculing our heightened fandom emotions.

Now, the benefits of this new holiday tradition are twofold:

1) With one specific day to air grievances, Buckeye fans would ceremonially and semi-religiously be prevented from bitching throughout the rest of the year. Let’s face it, we are a whiney bunch and the introduction of this new holiday would not only make social media a much more enjoyable place throughout the season, but it would also improve our lives and mental health if we didn’t constantly enter into needlessly bitter and never ending Twitter debates about the things that piss us off.

When something that a football player or coach does angers you, simply jot it down in your Notes app and forget about it until Dec. 22. Wouldn’t your life be so much better if all of that agony and misery constantly eating away at your soul and psyche was ignored for 364 days per year (365 in leap years)? I know it would be for me.

2) If we kept the complaining to just within private groups of Buckeye faithful, and didn’t allow it to become our entire online personalities, perhaps the impression of us as a fanbase amongst more level-headed college football fans would improve over time.

I mean, I know we would have a lot of ground to make up just to get back to sea level in this department, but the Festivus episode of “Seinfeld” aired in 1997, so that was 24 years ago. So, if we start celebrating Festi-Brutus (still not great, but better than “Brutivus”) in 2022, then by 2046 we might have done enough to repair our imagine as completely unreasonable, overly sensitive, and perpetually unsatisfied malcontents.

So, friends, I think that it is beyond time for Ohio State fans to take the thing that they are best at — complaining — and turn it into an official Buckeye Nation holiday. So, starting today, if your favorite player opts out of the Rose Bowl, or a specific coach returns to the staff in 2022, or a position coach can’t land a player of high importance on February’s National Signing Day, or Ryan Day can’t get his play-calling mojo back in the fall, write it down and then forget about it.

Then on Dec. 22, 2022, gather your Buckeye friends and family and let it all out; maybe you’ll want to burn some sage as well, just to get all of the bad juju out as well.