Happy Valentine's Day, Liberals!

This is sort of the same theme as Tuesday's cartoon. And, twice in the same week, I feature a 2012 presidential candidate shirtless. Hmm...

Holy Retirement

When I woke up Monday morning, did I know that before the day was through, I would be drawing the Pope sitting on a beach with a shirtless Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton in a swimsuit? No, no I didn't.

 

In today's Daily Iowan.

Bilingual

In today's Daily Iowan:

President Obama seems to feel more free these days. Not that it's all bad. But it is different.

I drew a pretty awesome cartoon yesterday about Pope Benedict XVI resigning ... this State of the Union was already planned. But I hope the Pope cartoon makes it in soon. It's a doozy.

The State of Iowa Basketball

Here's this season of Iowa basketball in cartoon form:

In today's Daily Iowan. Not one of the greatest cartoons I've ever done, but it's current and topical.

In case you can't tell, from left to right in the back, that's Michigan State, Indiana, Ohio State, and Michigan, and in the front, that's Northwestern, Penn State, and Iowa.

Iowa's doing pretty well beating up the cellar dwellers. But the Big 10 seems to be good this year ... Iowa not included.

To be honest, I'm not paying attention to college basketball nearly as well as I wish I were. I know BYU basketball isn't doing anything remarkable this season, but that's really all I know. Such is law school.

Good news?

This cartoon is based on this story:

UI audit finds no irregularities in athletics department, Gray situation

Transparency

University of Iowa's president, Sally Mason, has been going through a lot from the Iowa Board of Regents. Some of it has to do with Peter Gray, the Iowa associate director of athletics student services, who resigned last November amid allegations of sexual harassment.

There have been other similar incidents over the past few months. So the Board of Regents would like some more transparency for the university. Specifically, there's an idea to have an "transparency officer."

UI officials back Regent Lang's transparency proposals

Hence, this cartoon:

In today's The Daily Iowan.

Oblivious

And the Manti Te'o jokes continue.

So I actually drew two cartoons, one for either team winning. For some reason, The Daily Iowan has the other cartoon online ... I'm not sure if that was on purpose, so that no matter what happened, at least either the paper or the website would be correct. I was a little worried, because I saw it online first and I thought, "Oh no, they ran the wrong cartoon! I wonder if my cartoons were too confusing ..." But I was relieved to see the right one was published in the paper.*

Here's that other cartoon, in case you're curious:

Obviously, it's simply the reverse of the cartoon above. Which I could foresee as being confusing, if a newspaper editor under a looming deadline had to choose between the two.

How about that blackout, huh? I wish the Super Bowl weren't so past press deadlines, or else I definitely could have come up with a cartoon about that. (For some hilarious Twitter reactions, go here: The Funniest Tweets of the Great Super Bowl Blackout.)

* The Daily Iowan has since fixed the cartoon online.

Syncopated

Am I right?

(Published in today's Daily Iowan.)

"I'm a Real Boy!" ... With a Fake Girlfriend

I came up with a cool idea last week. I'm glad that even though it might be a little late, The Daily Iowan published it anyway.

This Manti Te'o story is so bizarre. I actually first wrote about Manti Te'o about two and a half years ago. In an op-ed column I wrote about Mormon football players at schools other than BYU, and whether they took a two-year break to go on a mission even though they were at an environment that wasn't as conducive. At the time, I thought it was too bad that Te'o was so adamant about going on a mission until he completely changed his mind, even though Notre Dame was all for it all along. I was a little disappointed in him.

Then, this year, it was great to watch Te'o be so successful and lead the Fighting Irish to the national championship, and bring more attention to the Church. It was almost another Jimmer Fredette moment. I thought, "Well, maybe it's a good thing he didn't go on a mission. The timing worked out perfectly for him to be a leader on the team when it went to the national championship, and he could represent the church this way, instead of being a missionary."

Now that all this fake girlfriend stuff has come out, though, all I can think is, "It's a good thing he didn't go to BYU." I have a feeling if it happened at BYU, BYU would receive more of the brunt of the scandal than another school would. Notre Dame seems to not be too big of a target, because there wasn't really anything that would be the school's fault. But BYU being a Church school, having a unique place among the nation's universities and the NCAA, and being in the spotlight relatively recently thanks to Jimmer, I think BYU would have been dragged through the mud a little bit. Te'o and the Church would have been lumped together.

As for Lance Armstrong: I used to like him a lot. But recently, it's more like, "meh." I know a lot of people are completely over the steroid era of baseball, and have more tolerance for steroids and doping now. They aren't as shocked anymore, and maybe have even accepted it as inevitable. I'm not shocked, and I'm not going to stand outside Cooperstown and chain myself to the door to prevent Barry Bonds from getting into the Hall of Fame. But, call me old fashioned, but I still expect my athletes to act like men and women, and follow the rules, and not take shortcuts.

Winter break is over

Another year, another round of The Daily Iowan cartoons.

This one is about Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who just announced he won't be seeking another term in 2014.