Editor’s note: Every Friday during the football season @FauxPelini will answer your football and life questions. These are actual questions from actual readers seeking advice.

Hi. This season I’ll be giving back to the college football community by answering important questions and solving life problems right here each week. Luckily some of you are deeply troubled and/or not very smart so this should not be super difficult.

Dear Faux Pelini,

I recently got engaged and my fiancée wants to have a fall wedding. Please help me convince her that Saturdays in the fall are for college football, not weddings.

Signed,

I Don’t Want to Miss the Game

Dear IDWTMTG,

I once had a cat that I liked very much. He was a loyal companion, a trusted friend, never bothered anybody. However, once in a while he did a very bad thing: he peed on the basement carpet. This made me angry, because cat pee smells and I didn’t want my basement to smell. I tried everything — I reasoned with him, stared him down, started rumors about him, called him hurtful names. Nothing worked.

Ultimately I made the decision to keep this cat, bad habit and all. And from that point forward it wasn’t really his fault when the basement carpet got peed on. He was just doing what he did, being who he was. I decided to keep him and his basement-peeing tendencies in my house, and therefore I had only myself to blame every time it happened after that. You can’t get mad at someone for being who he is; you can only decide to be with him or not.

So, IDWTMTG, you have a decision to make. You basically have a girlfriend who pees in the basement. She thinks a fall wedding is a perfectly reasonable thing to have, even though it is not. But that’s not her fault. It’s just who she is. Maybe she had questionable parents or bumped her head as a child — whatever the reason, this is who she is. She is a person who thinks fall weddings are fine, and you picked her, presumably because she has other good qualities unrelated to college football.

Much of life is figuring out who to be mad at, and unfortunately many times the answer is YOU. You picked a fiancée who doesn’t understand that college football is the most important thing, and so of course she decided a fall wedding is fine. That’s who she is. But you are the one who picked her to be your wife. So don’t be mad at her, be mad at yourself. Or better yet, don’t be mad at yourself, and just shut up about it. There’s nothing more boring than a person who complains about his own decision.

IDWTMTG, go to your wedding and record the game. And invest in some carpet cleaner.

Dear Faux Pelini,

While everyone is different and deals with challenges in different ways, Cal fans are particularly vexed by the constant state of inadequacy our football program is in. What are your suggestions for how to deal with consistent mediocrity, with slight glimmers of being good, long periods lacking hope, and nearly a decade of being beaten down by a very boring rival?

With many sighs,

Matt, class of ’13

Dear MCO13,

Because you seem like a nice person and used the word “vexed” in your question, I’m going to share the secret of life with you: Life is one simple math formula.

The formula is:

[PERFORMANCE] – [EXPECTATIONS] = X

If X is a positive number you get raises and praise and friends.

If X is a negative number, you get fired and people think you are dumb.

Many people focus on making sure their performance is great. They study, go to the gym, practice, read and do all kinds of other stuff to make sure they are performing as well as they can. And all of that is good and worth doing.

But it ignores half of the equation.

People don’t really care what you accomplish, MCO13. I mean, they care, but that’s not the main thing. What they really care about is whether you disappointed them or impressed them. And whether they are disappointed or impressed is tied to what they subconsciously predicted was going to happen in the first place, which was based on their expectations.

So you want expectations about you and your teams and other things you care about to be as low as possible.

For example, if a coach goes into a season where six wins are expected and he wins eight, there will be parties and nice articles and maybe a raise. If the fans and bosses expect 10 wins and he wins nine, people will be mad. (Trust me on that one.) It’s just math.

MCO13, you can use this formula to your advantage by setting your own expectations as low as you can, and making sure others have low expectations of you, too. For your Cal football team, brainwash yourself into believing that five wins is just fine and that you will never make it to a Rose Bowl. If you win seven or eight games it will be a great year! And if you one day make the Rose Bowl you will wet yourself.

If you expect great things to happen, the best you can be is satisfied. If you expect bad things, you can be pleasantly surprised and even happy, and never sigh again.

Dear Faux Pelini,

Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?

Signed,

R.G.

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Droid

Well R.G.,

I’m going to answer your question, but first I want to thank you for telling me about the phone you sent this message from! HEY EVERYBODY, R.G. HAS A VERIZON 4G LTE DROID. As I read your question I was wondering what kind of phone you had, and you answered that right off the top, so thanks!

Dammit R.G., the #1 rule of Pointless Bragging is to make sure it’s about a thing somebody might be impressed by, not about what type of goddamn phone you are holding in your hand. You have four G’s? Oh my God, congratulations! Those are so many G’s. I think I have like two G’s on a good day. And are you serious that your phone has LTE?! I wish I had LTE so I could know all the secret LTE codes and get invited to the secret LTE parties and poetry slams. And it’s a Droid! There are droids in Star Wars, which is a popular science fiction movie, which means you must be popular and smart! I bet you read Scientific American and medical journals on your Droid LTE phone.

Don’t make us hate you, R.G. Stop talking about your phone all the time.

Animal crackers are pretend animals, so yes, vegetarians can eat them. Vegans may or may not be able to eat them depending on ingredients and other factors. Maybe we’ll cover that next week.

Dear Faux Pelini,

What’s this all about man, why are we here?

Signed,

Charlie K.

Sent from my iPhone

Oh My God Charlie K.,

Were you not reading my reply to R.G.? NOBODY CARES WHAT KIND OF PHONE YOU HAVE. If we’re going to make this advice column work, we need to lay out some ground rules. First rule: NO EXTRA INFORMATION THAT NOBODY CARES ABOUT.

Please say this into your special iPhone: “Hey Siri, why are we here and also please delete all my contacts because I don’t deserve friends”

Dear Faux Pelini,

Remember when Texas lost to Kansas?

Signed,

Mark F.

Thank You Mark F.,

This is more like it. What a fun question! I do — I do remember when Texas lost to Kansas! That was just last year, on November 19, and the score was Kansas 24, Texas 21. It was surprising because Kansas sucks at football very much, and Texas’ football program has many millions of dollars piled up around its practice fields and workout facilities, yet Kansas scored more points than Texas in that game. Texas people became very angry that day, and their coach soon became very sad.

It is fun and reassuring when bad things happen to Texas football because one time, not long ago, Dan Beebe, the BCS, ABC Sports and Barack Obama granted Texas an extra second in a very important game against a very handsome coach and they used that extra second to kick a very unfair and pretend field goal and “won” that game 13-12. This upset the football gods very much, so they set out on a campaign to punish the Texas football team in creative and painful ways, including sending Charlie Strong as their anointed son to cause pain and sadness and do things like lose to Kansas.

Remember, Mark F., when Texas loses it is good for football and good for the universe. Thank you for your wonderful question.

Dear Faux Pelini,

Is cereal a soup or a salad? The argument could be made that it’s a soup with the actual cereal being like noodles and the milk being the broth. Counter argument states that cereal is like lettuce and milk is just a dressing. Please weigh in on this one.

Signed,

Colton K.

Dear Colton K.,

The answer depends on the volume of milk involved. If the level of the milk rests above the cereal line, then the combination is classified as a soup. If, however, a limited amount of milk is poured into the bowl and it rests in and under the cereal elements (and is therefore mostly undetectable to the naked eye), then it is eligible for the salad category — but only if pieces of fruit are added to the cereal.

The offseason is hard, I know. But it’s over.

You can find Faux Pelini on Twitter at @FauxPelini.

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