We’re entering an awkward period on the sports calendar — the dreaded December slowdown.

Each year, the sports world shuts down for about a week as Christmas approaches. High school soccer goes into hibernation until after New Year’s. High school and college basketball go from a flood of games to a trickle as students endure final exams and prepare for the holidays.

Football slows to a crawl, with our state’s colleges only having a bowl game left.

There’s ways to fill the gaps. We save our All-County football team for Christmas for precisely this reason. This year it’ll run Dec. 24, 25 and 26.

So what’s a sports fan to do? What depths of depravity can they sink to in order to get their fix?

I offer you Fox Sports 2.

Fox Sports 2 is on what’s called “deep cable,” those channels that are offered only on certain sports tiers and used as a clearance rack so that the bigger channels can air the good stuff.

It is the island of misfit sports, where bad football games go to never be seen and extreme sports and MMA matches will always have a home.

It. Is. Awesome.

Today, for example, there’s the semifinals of a club soccer tournament in Japan followed by a replay of last week’s Aldo-McGregor UFC undercard. Not the 13-second main event. The undercard. Some of it.

On Saturday, we get snowboarding and more UFC coverage — not actual fights, just coverage.

Sadly, the Australian Rules Football League season has ended. It was oddly mesmerizing coming home late from work on the weekend and watching this mashup of football, rugby and soccer. It must be what a moth feels like when it hears the sweet hum of a bug zapper.

Port Adelaide vs. Geelong, at 2 a.m.? Yes, please. Knowing you might be the only sober non-Aussie in the United States willingly watching this competition imbues you with a sense of responsibility. I must tell people of its existence, or at least what happened before I remember that a late night rerun of “Family Guy” is on Adult Swim.

So, how do you get through the December slowdown? Fox Sports 2, baby. Fox Sports 2. You won’t regret it, so long as you don’t watch for long. Even morbid curiosity has its limits.

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Ernest Bowker can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com