CYBERSPACE — On a dreary December day in Virtual Lincoln, Neb., @FauxPelini brushes some Cheeto dust off his pajama pants and savors a sip from a 20-oz. plastic bottle of Mountain Dew. He glances at the window, where scattered raindrops from a passing drizzle collect and cascade down the dusty glass then drip off into oblivion, and turns back to his desktop computer to monitor the latest NCAA football job openings. He stretches to pet his faithful cat as she scampers by, just beyond his reach.

“Biggest regret is probably not yelling more to prevent people like Melvin Gordon from running all over the defenses,” @FauxPelini says, reliving the Wisconsin halfback’s record-setting performance against his doppelganger’s Nebraska Cornhuskers a month earlier. “There can always be more yelling. Yelling is teaching.”

At around 1:45 p.m., @FauxPelini changes into cargo shorts and heads to his local 7-11 for a sandwich and a Dr. Pepper. Like all the great coaches, the Fake Bo Pelini carefully analyzes performances as mundane as those involved in coffee-urn preparation and Slurpee constitution.

“They are doing some good things,” he says. “But there are things to work on, areas they can get better. Execution needs to be more consistent.”

I met @FauxPelini in a bustling Google Hangout during a strange time for the popular Internet persona, just two weeks after Nebraska fired the real Bo Pelini, ending a seven-year tenure in which the Huskers went 67-27 but failed to win a single conference title.

Over the prattle of keyboards and the triumphant din of Rush’s Tom Sawyer, the lone song on @FauxPelini’s iPhone (“It’s easier to organize that way,” he says), we discussed his rise to Twitter prominence upon the esteemed event of his nomination as For the Win‘s inaugural Internet Sportsman of the Year, which is totally not something we made up on a whim as an excuse to write a one-note satirical post mocking such honors.

“I’ve never been an Internet Sportsman of the Month, no less a Year,” he said. “So it’s exciting, and an honor.”

@FauxPelini’s sensational 2014 began with the Huskers’ upset victory over Georgia in the Gator Bowl, after which the Real Pelini took to Twitter to acknowledge the fictional persona he inspired and request the return of his cat.

@FauxPelini ok enough is enough… I want my cat back. You've had her long enough! — Bo Pelini (@BoPelini) January 7, 2014

That odd contemporary phenomenon — reality bleeding into invention and back again — highlighted @FauxPelini’s year throughout, but never more obviously than when Real Pelini led his team onto the field for its spring game while clutching the cat Fake Pelini made famous.

“A lot of guys on my staff thought it would be a great idea for the spring game,” the Real Pelini said later, because — note — the actual Nebraska staff apparently spent time discussing a fake Twitter account mocking the school’s head coach. “The players loved it, anyways I was just having some fun with it.”

Even as he pondered his continued existence with his real-life muse’s career in flux, @FauxPelini maintained his inimitable presence on social media, luring an invite to the Belk Bowl from the people running the Belk Bowl’s Twitter account.

And after the Actual Bo Pelini doomed himself to relative obscurity by taking a job coaching Youngstown State in the Missouri Valley Conference, the Fake Pelini soldiered on, a digital reminder of an analog departure from Nebraska’s vast football landscape, online and otherwise. On Dec. 27, the hashtag #AskFaux trended worldwide as @FauxPelini responded to questions from some of his 180,000 followers.

I WOULDN'T SAY I'M MISSING IT BOB RT @combatmedic325: what do you miss most about Nebraska? #AskFaux — Fake Bo Pelini (@FauxPelini) December 28, 2014

A couple hours later, @FauxPelini gave the world the news it hoped for, revealing that even with Real Pelini gone, Fake Pelini will carry on as the ironic, 140-character embodiment of the Nebraska fanbase’s hope, history and histrionics, and, until 2016 or whenever we next decide this is a good idea, as For the Win’s reigning Internet Sportsman of the Year.

And I'm not going anywhere so let's stay friends — Fake Bo Pelini (@FauxPelini) December 28, 2014

(Click here to read FTW’s honorable mentions)