Time to Go Bowling?:

Am I a genius or what?

Over a month ago, I said LSU vs. Alabama was the 'real national championship' regardless of who played in January for the title. Then, lo and behold, the BCS system agreed with me, and decided that none other than -- LSU and Alabama will be playing in the BCS championship game this January too!

There's no way around it. LSU demolished every single opponent aside from Alabama this season. No one else has shown they would stand any chance against LSU. Oklahoma State barely escaped with wins against several weak teams, and lost to an unranked Iowa State. Alabama lost, in overtime, to #1 LSU, and that's it. Other than that their record is spotless. Alabama is clearly the second best team in the country. Stanford got creamed by Oregon, who was in turn creamed by LSU earlier this season. A national championship game between LSU and Stanford would have been a joke. I'm glad that the system got together and decided not to play favoritism, but to simply put the two best teams in the nation together, even if they've played before, and even if they're both in the same division of the same conference. As a result, we're going to have a good game in 2012, instead of a blowout, which it would have been if anyone else had gone up against the invincible LSU Tigers.

This has also left room for a great 'kid's division national championship,' #3 Oklahoma State vs. #4 Stanford. Now both of these games will be close, instead of say LSU blowing out Oklahoma State and Alabama blowing out Stanford.

The third best bowl game this season will be the Cotton Bowl, #6 Arkansas vs. #8 Kansas State. The plucky wildcats have won many close games, and the plucky Arkansas razorbacks have salvaged many 4th quarter comebacks, to get where they are today. A competition between who's the pluckier sounds rather awesome.

Congrats to Clemson for their first good season in forever and the usual suspects (Oregon, Virginia Tech, Wisconsin, West Virginia) for being the kings of their little ponds. Michigan hasn't been a good team in forever so I'll be interested to see them play this bowl season as well. However, it seems clear to me that the SEC and the Big 12 were the two strongest conferences by far this year, and the champions of outside conferences would only be mediocre in either of those two conferences. Georgia, South Carolina, Oklahoma, or Baylor could easily whip Michigan, for example. That's just the second tier of the SEC and Big 12!

Anyway, the bowl season is the highlight of the winter holidays. But that's only the beginning. After that we have the pro football playoffs (the only time I tune in for pro football because before then none of their games matter), then March Madness (the only time I tune in for college basketball cuz that's the only time the games matter), and then the Summer Olympics begin!

While people are preaching about a 2012 apocalypse, I'll be eating popcorn and enjoying sports, sports, sports!

While we're on the topic of entertainment though, I said recently I had rewatched Star Wars and found them to be depressingly bad. I was happy and relieved when I tried rewatching Lord of the Rings and found them to be as beautiful and moving as ever. Some of the portions dragged, quite a lot, to the point that I was too bored to watch any of the movies straight through, but other parts were incredibly exciting, so I'll forgive the boring parts. If anyone hasn't seen this trilogy yet, they need to go out and do so. The Hobbit should be arriving in theaters this year to continue the tale. It will be nice to get back to Middle Earth.

And did I mention that the spiritual successor to Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time's concluding novel Memory of Light, is coming out in 2012? Only 50 times? Well, it is. And it's going to be the crown jewel of the greatest written work of all time.

I've really enjoyed 2011, but as we transition into 2012, it's clear that it's only getting better from here.