Former LSU coach Nick Saban holds the National Championship trophy

For the first time since they started the BCS, a non-conference champion won the title game. And, unless you count the Bowl Alliance (1995-1997 seasons), it was the first time the SEC champion lost the “title game.”

But was it really a title game?

A lot of people seemed to be upset that Alabama, which didn’t win its conference — heck, it didn’t even win its division — was even in the title game.

Of course, I don’t remember hearing all those people piss and moan when Oklahoma played in the title game in 2004 (2003 season) even though they got beat by Kansas State in the Big 12 title game. LSU ended up beating the Sooners in the National Championship Game.

I also don’t remember a bunch of whining when Nebraska was in the title game in 2002 (2001 season) when they didn’t qualify for the Big 12 title game. Miami beat the Huskers in the National Championship Game.

But, this time, the non-conference champ beat the team that “deserved” to be there, unlike the two Big 12 teams from the 2001 & 2002 seasons.

Of course, this was a rematch from a game played earlier in the year. That’s never happened before. Unless you count the 1997 Bowl Alliance title game (1996 season) between Florida and Florida State. FSU won the regular season finale, but Florida won the rematch in the National Championship Game.

So what happened — a non-conference champ in the game and a rematch in the game — has happened before. All this whining should have happened the first time one of these things happened. Or the second. Or the third. Waiting until the fourth is a little late.

What should have happened? There should have been a playoff. The 11 conference champions and the top five non-conference champions should have been placed in a pool of 16. Like I wrote about here. Then, the two teams that are still standing after that have shown they deserve to be there. Who knows what would have happened? We may have had an Alabama-LSU rematch. Or, a game between Oklahoma State and Boise State.

Will a playoff happen? No, because a true championship isn’t the goal of the people in charge.

So, we’re stuck with a very imperfect system. Sort of like how we pick presidential candidates.

* If we want to get more people to pay attention to the debt crisis, we need to learn from global warming on how to present it.

Think of it: The next time the president tries to raise the debt ceiling and spend our way out of debt, panicked scientists rush to the president and say, “According to our computer models, if you keep adding to a number, it gets bigger.”

He’d probably demand they recheck their data, and they would say, “It’s undeniable: Only subtraction reduces the debt.” And the president would have to listen to them, because they’d be wearing lab coats.

Yes, it’s a new New York Post column by me, Frank J. Fleming. Go read it and have fun.

* So there were two Republican debates over the weekend. I watched the one Saturday but not the one Sunday morning because it was on Sunday morning. Anyway, the Saturday one was awful. They spent 15 minutes talking about whether states should theoretically be able to ban contraception — because that’s the big issue of the day. And the next two questions were on gay marriage because you know how many Republicans there are out there waiting to hear the candidates talk more about gay marriage before they make their decision.

Why do we have moderators of Republican debates who have no idea what Republicans actually care about? This is the heart of media bias: Even if these people tried as hard as they could to be fair to conservatives, they don’t understand them enough to represent their views. Liberals are just ignorant, and that’s fine and dandy except in a Republican primary debate.

* BTW, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee. Before one of you whines (and you should know, conservatives don’t whine) that barely any of the voting has happened yet, I’m just telling you what reality is. With how Romney is doing in the polls and how none of the other candidates have been able to lay a finger on him — and have barely even tried in the recent debates — it’s a done deal. If you don’t want Romney to be the Republican nominee, you better pray for a meteor because that’s what it will take to stop him now. Reality, dudes.

For the rest of us, we can start working on a Romney slogan. “Romney: Clearly not Obama”. Best I can come up with so far.

* So Obama is bypassing the Constitution again to do non-recess recess appointments, and Sunny is on the case:

* Illinois is apparently bouncing checks on lottery winnings. First off, don’t play the lottery — do something useful with your money. Second, don’t play the lottery in Chicago because you can’t trust these people.

Remember, Chicago is where Obama got all his political knowledge. What checks do you think he’s going to start bouncing?

* Wisdom of the Day from Ace of Spades:

protip: the best people to rebut a charge that a candidate has courted Nazis are probably not the Nazis who have been successfully courted.

* Has your main complaint about ants been that their jaws aren’t massive enough? Well, then it’s Science! to the rescue! Yes, Science! is making ant heads bigger because… it can. And if you’re all like, “I don’t like ants with massive heads and jaws!” then you’re anti-science. Stop standing in the way of progress, progress towards… a more powerful ant future, I guess.

So we can make ants with larger heads, but we can’t even get to the moon anymore? Which is too bad because that would be a good place to get away from the massive-jawed ants.

I prefer a secular government, but I’d like it designed and run by Christians. I still won’t trust it.

Aww man. I just realized the true meaning of Christmas but it’s a couple weeks late. Hope I remember it for next year.

How can you live in America and not own a gun? That’s like living in France and not owning stinky cheese.

For you Republican candidates trying to gain traction: Just punch a hippie in the face and make sure there are witnesses.

When my mom heard I was going to be on Monica Crowley’s show, her reaction was, “She knows Bill O’Reilly!”

It’s okay to hate and dehumanize people if you do it over politics and not race.

So Obama claims he never heard his pastor say nutty, racist things, and Ron Paul claims he never heard himself say it.

So how many Republicans are out there waiting on more discussion of gay marriage to decide who to vote for?

Are we really out of Iraq when we have thousands of armed contractors still there?

The Republican candidates all know there isn’t actually a prize for 2nd place, right?

Jon Huntsman: “I watched Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon without subtitles and followed most of it. Elect me president.”

Since it’s now pretty much certain Romney is going to be the nominee, what are we going to talk about until the convention?

Wow. The Simpsons are going to be having their 500th episode soon. I think you could probably count on one hand how many of those episodes I’ve never seen. Of course, for the first ten seasons, I probably average having seen each episode three times.

Turned the Bronco/Steelers game on and as soon as she saw a guy in a football helmet, Buttercup put her arms in the air and yelled, “Touchdown!”

Buttercup loves the Christmas coke cans. She keeps pointing at the polar bears on them and yells, “Rarr!”

Pep talk to Steelers: “Come on; this is to defeat Christianity once and for all.”

Didn’t seem like a Hail Mary would work against Tebow.

Lesson learned: If you homeschool your child and teach him to be a good Christian, he’ll win playoffs in the NFL.

* I will be on Monica Crowley’s radio show this weekend. I’ll be on probably around 2:30pm if you’re in New York, but the show airs at lots of different times on lots of different stations, so check your local listings. Hopefully it will also appear online.

* I was all okay with Romney being a nothing squish taking office and trying not to rock the boat as all moderates do, but then I realized something: No one becomes the president without aiming for greatness when there (except for Coolidge, of course). So what will Mitt Romney do to try and be known as great? If you consider him really a moderate at heart, what would a moderate do that he thinks is significant? It’s kind of a scary question.

* GM is recalling 8,000 Chevy Volts because they catch fire. That’s right: They took the explosive fuel out of the car and somehow made it more flammable. But it’s saving the environment — if you consider the insides of a volcano part of the environment.

The thing is, I don’t think they’ve sold 8,000 Volts. So where are most of them? I hope someone is keeping track of them. I’d hate to think they’re out there, lurking, waiting to burn us all down.

Now I get the Volts’s strategy to save the environment: Kill the humans and burn down their stuff!

* Hey I have a great idea: I don’t agree with someone’s politics, but instead of arguing on that I’ll just go after how they mourned the loss of a child. Some people trade their humanity for their partisanship, and their politics end up less like reasoned stances on issues and more like a mental disease. People like that should be locked up in asylum and injected with stuff. I don’t care with what.

* So who are the biggest religious persecutors in the world? Number one is North Korea, and usually commies have been high on the list, but the rest of the top ten is now all Muslim countries. I don’t know if anyone else has notices this, but do some Muslims seem a little insecure when their religion is challenged?

* Scientists have made chimera monkeys, combining six monkeys into one super monkey. Well, it actually just seems like another regular monkey, yet somehow I know this could lead to apes taking over the world. Shouldn’t it be rule number one when deciding whether an experiment is ethical that scientists ask themselves, “Could this possibly lead to The Planet of the Apes”?

Spiders should evolve to jump at people’s faces when they try to kill them. I wouldn’t kill spiders if I thought they might jump at my face.

What’s made me wary about Jon Huntsman is that his name, when translated from English, means “to hunt man”.

Quite the engineering feat to take the explosive fuel out of a car yet make it more flammable.

Everyone who is president wants to be known as a great president. What do you think Romney would do towards the goal of greatness? I’m actually kind of scared by that question.

Of course, Coolidge didn’t care about greatness. He was the honey badger president.

Is everyone still talking about the Republican presidential primary? When are we done with that?

I knew I wasn’t going to like who the GOP picked as their nominee when I realized he was probably going to be a politician.

* So Obama is making recess appointments even though Congress isn’t in recess. Well, sometimes you just have to say, “Yeah, the Constitution is important, but it’s not more important than the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”

We can’t always expect Obama to wait for Congressional approval; sometimes, we just need to respect his judgement. And so far he’s shown the sort of judgement that… well, he hasn’t ever accidentally set himself on fire.

* Michelle Bachmann is out of the presidential race. She seemed to flare out the quickest of all the presidential candidates who temporarily were frontrunner. I guess it was the “Gardasil makes you retarded” thing. Republicans are very wary of the nut charge (well, other than Ron Paul supporters… who mainly aren’t Republicans) and that was just a little much. Bachmann has some great enthusiasm and I liked her in a lot of the debates, but you have to control the crazy eyes.

* Rick Perry is staying in the race, though. I guess he’s still hoping there’s time for the anti-Romney vote to rally behind another candidate, but are we going to give Perry a second try? Republicans seem to like candidates who have mastery of at least one language, and Perry’s debate performances did not demonstrate that. How would he do against Obama? Maybe he could just hold up his record in Texas and not speak.

* Hey, remember how in 2008 we temporarily rallied behind Romney as a last ditch effort to stop McCain? So maybe things are a bit better this year since we’re instead trying to find someone to rally behind to stop Romney. Just looking on the bright side of things.

* What’s the one thing in government the Democrats are eager to cut? That’s right: the military. If only we could get them to trade that for cuts in things that actually really really need to be cut.

Probably not under this president.

* A Daily Beast article asks why are the youth rallying behind old man Ron Paul who looks like one of the criminals Scooby Doo would uncover. I say it’s because young people are stupid.

I don’t know what to add to that.

* Georgia is starting a new ad campaign to inform people that fat kids get made fun of. If you want to stop childhood obesity, just put up pictures of a scowling Michelle Obama with the words, “If you’re overweight, she’ll come after you.”

* Poisoned cat meat killed a Chinese tycoon. I don’t want to make fun of other cultures, but, ha! Look at that silly other culture!

* Wisdom of the Day from Fred Thompson:

Carney asked if Obama admin acting like a “monarchy.” Ridiculous. If it were a monarchy, Michelle would at least let us eat cake.

* A Mexican grand warlock has predicted that Obama will be defeated in 2012. So there you go: Mexican warlocks making the predictions American warlocks won’t.

I don’t get the argument for Rick Santorum. He was Senator for awhile and…

“No, it can’t go up the stairs. This isn’t science fiction.” -guy pitching the Slinky

“You know that recent rash of candlestick murders? What if that were a board game?” -guy pitching Clue

“I was in the Navy for 30 years! This is what naval combat looks like, you paper pusher!” -guy pitching Battleship

“People are always complaining that chess involves too much strategy and not enough candy.” -guy pitching Candyland

“I got the idea when I burnt my face on a light bulb.” -guy pitching the Easy Bake Oven

* So the winner of Iowa caucus is… Romney, by eight votes. He narrowly beat out Rick Santorum who one might think would have a boost from this, but pretty much no one thinks he has a chance to carry on his momentum to other states. Plus, I don’t really get what his qualifications are supposed to be. He was a Senator and while ago and…

Anyway, now Romney is expected to sew up his inevitability soon. Intrade has him at over 90% chance to win New Hampshire, and that will probably be about it already.

So do you guys like Romney? Okay, but can you tolerate him? Sure you can.

* Iowa was supposed to be Ron Paul’s big day, but he ended up taking third by winning hugely among the non-Republicans voting in a Republican primary. He also did well in the youth vote, also known as morons.

Still, third is a respectful finish… which makes Iowa less respectful for giving it to him. So will Ron Paul be able to build off his momentum and attract more crazy to propel him to the win? Probably not. If only real life were an online poll that nuts with lots of time on their hands could game.

* As for the other candidates, Gingrich seems angry he came fourth, Rick Perry came fifth and his “reassessing” his campaign, and Michelle Bachman came in last — after having won the Iowa straw poll — but claims she’s going to continue her campaign (though it’s starting to look otherwise). Oh, and I guess Huntsman is still around who has been concentrating all his time on New Hampshire. He’s the one not-Romney who hasn’t had his time in the sun yet. Will he surprise everyone in New Hampshire and get the desperate votes of everyone still hoping to stop Mitt? Probably not. We tried to stop Romney and failed, people. We can just hope Obama does no better.

* John McCain has endorsed Mitt Romney. So if you were worried that Romney is some sort of RINO squish, that should allay your fears.

* Obama is putting his campaign theme together that he hopes will propel him to victory. Here’s one that might work for him: “Know what’s annoying? Jobs.”

* The Pentagon is abandoning the idea they should be able to wage two wars at once. So if we’re already in one war and you try to war against us, you’re going to be put on hold.

* Things have seemed pretty bad in the world lately, but there is still innovation. For instance, we now have Scotch in a can! Just what a desperate people were waiting for: 12 ounces of Scotch in a non-resealable container. You get the alcohol content of eight beers in a single can, so less waste to hurt the environment.

Seems kind of low class though. It’s certainly not sophisticated as cognac in a can.

* A Marine, going off faulty information on the internet, thought he could legally carry in New York City, and when he tried to check his gun at the Empire State Building in an attempt to comply with laws, he wound up arrested and may face fifteen years in prison. Good job gun laws protecting us from law abiding citizens who will volunteer they have a firearm when asked.

We’re now past forty states with right to carry, so shouldn’t we be shaming these last few holdouts the way we would places that still support segregation? This is America; we should have no tolerance for being backwards on the concept of liberty.

* Wisdom of the Day from Sarah:

I didn’t realize Ron Paul had a wife. I kind of thought he was like Papa Smurf.

Much more effective than robocalls is having the robots go door to door shaking hands.

Can’t wait for the day that politician is one of the jobs that can be done by robots.

Iowa hasn’t been relevant for 20 years and that was in an alternate universe where we needed Iowan expertise to fight mutant corn.

Ron Paul supporters are conspiracy nuts… 30% of whom have died in mysterious accidents.

Princess Buttercup has decreed that blocks are forbidden from being stacked on each other. Violations will incur her wrath.

Who is this Ron Paul chap that is projected to take 3rd in the Iowa caucus? Can anyone on the internet inform me about him?

NOTE: Big thanks to those who answered last week’s call for more lolterizt! submissions. I got what I needed (as you can see below) – you guys are awesome!

This week terrorists, next week That One. Submit for either at lolterizt@gmail.com

Meanwhile, pass ‘em around, spread the love, and if you make your own, don’t be shy about dropping a link to your pics in the comments. The more, the merrier.

NOTE TO READERS: Hovering your mouse over the picture activates closed captioning for the l33t-speak/txtmsg impaired.

---

From Dr. Jingo:

[reference link]

From James:

From Kris:

[reference link]

From Kris:

[reference link]

From Larsinkima:

From Larsinkima:

[reference link]

---

My favorites from the submissions using last edition’s uncaptioned picture:

From Arik:

From Carl:

[reference link]

From Dan:

[reference link]

From James:

From Jim:

From Jim:

[reference link]

From Jim:

[reference link]

From Mike:

[reference link]

From Travelwise42:

[reference link]

---

This week’s uncaptioned picture for you to play with:

---

Larsinkima for Herbie. I assume everyone’s familiar enough with Frank’s writings that no one needed to click the links for Dr. Jingo and Dan.

What say you?

---

PRODUCTION NOTES:
#1: When creating lolterizt! pictures, please caption with either black or white text, as colors like red and yellow tend to blur badly when I compress the images.

#2: Standard image size for these posts is 350px wide by whatever high. If you can have your images 350px wide before you caption them, I won’t end up shrinking your captions into illegibility when I re-size the images.

MAKE YOUR OWN: The free lolbuilder from I Can Has Cheezburger.

STYLE NOTE: Short captions are usually better. Your goal is 10 words or less, with humor value tending to increase exponentially as the number of words approaches 1.

HAT TIP: Brian of Snapped Shot‘s magnificent EvilFeed – the world’s best source for ripe-for-captioning terrorist photos.

Send your submissions to lolterizt@gmail.com and – if they aren’t obscene (IMAO is a PG-13 site) and don’t suck too terribly bad – I’ll post them for you. Remember to include your name (and blog URL, if applicable) so I know who to thank.

* Well, that was a nice break. A week of no political writing. Which means I’m going to have to ease myself back in here. Anyway, it’s now 2012 — a presidential election year! Exciting! I mean, we read about politics all the time, but this is when it starts becoming everyone’s interest. So, will we be able to get rid of Obama? Stay tuned to IMAO to find out as we’ll be the only one reporting on it!

* BTW, I did post a couple things during my vacation. I had a new column in the New York Post, and got an Axe Cop parody of my book cover. Axe Cop might be a good symbol for the Tea Party. He’d cut government. With an axe.

* So what’s in the news… Oh, Iowa. How exciting. I guess the caucus is today, and then we don’t need to speak of Iowa again for another four years. Of interest will be how well Ron Paul does as that will tell us how easily we can dismiss the whole thing as idiotic. Then it’s on to New Hampshire, and barring meteors or other unforeseen events, Romney will be pretty close to sewing the whole thing up leading I’m quite sure to a national discussion on Mormonism until November.

Hey, we had our chance to bring down Romney, but no one was able to land a blow on him despite him seeming to have a glass jaw with Romneycare. Well, if we couldn’t bring him down, hopefully that means Obama won’t be able to either. Anyway, it’s nice having a candidate we openly despise — that means it will be hard for us to be disappointed. Maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised.

But probably not.

* In other news, Iran is being threatening again. Or is still being threatening. Is someone going to do something about them and the nukes they’re working on? Obama probably won’t, but Israel, you’re right there; why don’t you do something? It’s not like whatever you do will cause the Middle East to like you less. I say go crazy.

* Crowder has a new video on debating liberals about Occupy Wall Street:

I find the best argument to be “Shut up, hippie!” and them punch them in the face. No good retort to that.

* And that’s it for now. Tune in tomorrow for a very important discussion of the Iowa results! 2012 only gets more exciting from here! I like exclamation points!

So is Occupy Wall Street still a thing?

If you think Ron Paul has an actual chance to be president, the kind of lusional you are is the “de” kind.

“Happy Christmas and other holidays that we give added importance to because they occur near Christmas!” sounds more honest.

I like Krampus. Leave it to Germans to say, “Know what the joy of Christmas needs? A scary demon that eats children.”

“If you love Christmas so much, why don’t you just merry it?”

I think there’s more photographic evidence of the Loch Ness monster and bigfoot than there is that anyone actually celebrates Kwanzaa.

One of my favorite Dr. Suess books is much more racist than I remembered. “If I Ran the Zoo” was one of my favorites as a child, but the Asian and African caricatures are a little much.

I can’t wait for the day we’re no longer dependent on corn and can ignore Iowa.

For extra professionalism, I always speak with an English accent when answering the phone.

To make sure it’s sanitary, I boil all my water and then filter it through ground coffee.

Mission Impossible ::SPOILER:: – The mission wasn’t impossible, just very difficult.

Saw there is going to be a sequel to Clash of the Titans; I hope the trailer has the line “Release the Kraken… again!”

One thing I didn’t get about Mission Impossible: Why did the bad guy impersonate his own henchman? Was a twist to no purpose.

Liked the teaser for the next Mission Impossible film:
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use ‘orange’ in a rhyme.”
“That’s impossible!”

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to lick your own elbow.” #MissionImpossible

“But won’t it be hard to identify who’s crazy on the internet?”
“That’s why I came up with my new invention: the Caps Lock key.”

Having withdrawal from finally beating The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Keep thinking there must be more Zelda to play. Took me more than a month to get through it. Long game, but very engaging all the way through. Was it the best Zelda ever? Not quite sure, but certainly a contender.

I predict no more than two or three more sucky years until our country has its groove back.

Been playing that Skyrim game. How come a mammoth is harder to kill than a dragon?

Also been playing the new Batman game. I get the feeling he just likes beating people up. At least when played by me. There will be a group of thugs standing around, menacing no one, and I’ll jump in and leave them all unconscious and get rewarded for it.

Tip if you’re new to Skyrim: Mammoths and giants won’t bother you if you don’t bother them. Don’t bother them.

This was my past week: “Baby is asleep; time for video games!” Back to work today.

The root cause of crime is people not getting punched in the face by a guy dressed as a bat.

How many billionaires does our country have? Would any of them make a good Batman?

If one billionaire starts running around punching poor people, soon all will be doing it.

Cross-posted at America is an Obamanation!

For 2012, I have composed a list of resolutions for the new year. I have reviewed the list and removed the items that I really don’t mean, and left the ones that have the best chance of being kept. That might not be in the true spirit of resolutions, but at least it’s honest.

I hereby resolve to:

• do a better job of helping out around the house
• be respectful of liberals
• not think everyone who voted for Obama is an idiot
• not throw rocks at the neighbors’ dogs
• not make fun of rednecks
• not make fun of yankees
• not think everyone who voted for Obama is a moron
• be a role model for children
• pay attention when my wife is talking
• apologize when I’m wrong
• compliment people more often
• become a serious blogger
• stop recycling old posts
• not think everyone who voted for Obama is a dumbass
• sprout wings and fly

Best wishes for a safe, prosperous, and happy 2012.