The only March Madness bracket you need this year
Ah, March Madness: the glorious three days of the year that are followed by weeks of March Sadness after some plucky 11 seed turns a whole quadrant of your carefully selected bracket masterpiece to shit. If youāre like me, you have tried various strategies over the years to pick a bracket, THE BRACKET, solid enough to win your pool and let your coworkers know that while your hoop game may not be impenetrable, your knowledge-of-the-hoop game definitely is. From higher level stats to obsessive sports blog surfing to literally just letting your three year old niece pick based on team color schemes, youāve tried every tactic. But to no avail.
Fortunately this year, I have developed a very scientific process for picking a bracket that will 100% win your pool*. The strategy behind it is proprietary, but itās loosely (if not entirely) based on which team mascots would win in a battle. Ā I spent a concerning amount of my childhood playing Pokemon behind my book during class silent reading time, so Iām somewhat of an expert in fictional creature match-ups.
So, without further ado, I present your 2016 NCAA Mascot Bracketology. Enter your pool using this as your guide and I guarantee you will dazzle both your friends and foes with your mastery of the bracket and knowledge of the glorious sport of basketball.
*May not actually win your pool.
Aside from a smattering of birds and the rogue turtle, this is a very mammal-heavy region. As such, the general rule of thumb is to choose the mammal with more and/or bigger claws and/or teeth.
There is, however, one match-up that must be discussed separately.
CAL GOLDEN BEARS VS. HAWAII RAINBOW WARRIORS: This is, hands down, the most majestic match-up of all time. Donāt come at me with any other games claiming that they were the pinnacle of basketball, for we alone are blessed to witness such an event. This is Magic Johnson throwing a running hook shot to win game 4 of the 1987 NBA finals. Except Magic Johnson is actually a Magical Golden Bear and the floor is rainbows and the basketball is a disco ball and everyoneās on just a plethora of shrooms.
So, predictions. In an unprecedented move, the Golden Bears and Rainbow Warriors will start tripping balls and decide competition isnāt for them. Soon after, they will combine #SquadGoals and become the unstoppable force that is the Golden Bear Warriors, led by our lord and savior, Steph Curry. RIP every other team in every sport on earth, basically.
Steph Curry making a 3 from outer space
(Also of note: there is a team in this region whose mascot is The Shockers. I have so many questions for them. Primarily: why? Did you crowdsource this name from a group of middle school boys? And does your mother know!???)
What we have here is a very career-focused field. We have the Trojans competing with the Friars and the Mountaineers facing the Lumberjacks (which Iām assuming will actually be a one-man play about a guy facing an identity crisis because Iām pretty sure Mountaineers and Lumberjacks are one and the same). Thrown into the applicant pool are also the Fighting Irish and the Musketeers. Ā
The key metric youāll want to consider here is earning potential of each career field. Sorry, Musketeers, but the advent of modern ammunition and firing methods means you just donāt stack up against other forms of firearm-wielding soldiers these days. Time to update the olā LinkedIn because the only āship yāall are going to is a sinking one.
Some match-ups to look out for:
USC Trojans vs. Providence Friars: At first, this seems like some time-warped medieval history lesson. Monks vs. some guys best known for waging war? It seems like an obvious choice until you remember that Trojans donāt have the greatest track record, militarily speaking. If the Friars show up on the court with their best offense ensconsed in a giant wooden horse, are the Trojans just going to be like āOh, VERY CHILL, a gift from our sworn enemies. Letās bring it right in and station it directly in the paint. Better not guard it in any form or even play defense at all.ā? Historically speaking, itās probable. Friars all the way on this one.
Indiana Hoosiers vs. Chattanooga Mocs: I donāt know what either of these are. This is an imaginary match-up and therefore any speculation on the outcome of such a match-up is going to be equally absurd. I predict that midway through the first half, a four-headed unicorn will dig up through the court using its horns like a tunnel borer and score the-square-root-of-negative-1 points, resulting in a massive victory for the Mocs, who would have otherwise resoundingly lost the game due to the fact that their team exists entirely of disembodied wizard heads floating around aimlessly.
Kentucky Wildcats vs. Stony Brook Seawolves: Wikipedia informs me that a sea wolf could be either a) a āsolitary fish with strong, prominent teeth and projecting tusks that give it a savage lookā or b) a nuclear submarine. Either way, Iām not fucking with it. I predict the sea wolves torpedo the wildcats with their nuclear, projecting tusks.
The shit that gets me about sports teams is the lack of naming creativity. There is nothing that says āthou shalt only name thy sport team after a wing-ed creature or semi-mythical beastā. I checked, because honestly, Iāve seen weirder laws out there. But no such rule, regulation, or divine commandment exists. And yet here we are. Of the 64 teams in the 2016 NCAA tourney, four are Wildcats and five are Bulldogs. Various forms of hawks ā from sea to jay ā play a prominent role. Two of the teams IN THIS REGION ALONE are named after different colors of raiders. I didnāt even know raiders came in colors other than varying shades of skin tone, tbqh.
Besides the red and blue raiders, this conference also features two pirates, some cavaliers, and the Spartans. It makes you wish they had spread the swashbuckling out among the regions a little more because I am 100% here for a āPirates of the Caribbeanā-themed Elite 8. Perhaps next year, NCAA committee, perhaps next year.
In general, the idea with this region is to pick the objectively more badass of the two mascots. However, there are two situations weāre dealing with here where that is either inadvisable or impossible:
Purdue Boilermakers vs. UALR Trojans: Congratulations, Purdue. You can boil water. Or construct water boilers, whichever. In either scenario, your āsuperpowerā is that water eventually gets boiled via some mechanism. Normally Iād say the ability to transform liquid water into its gaseous state would not be enough to win any match-up of literally any sort. As previously discussed though, if you can conduct your boiling activities inside a wooden horse-kitchen of some kind, the Trojans could very well fall to your subterfuge. Iād say Boilermakers are a smart pick for this yearās dark horse.
Dayton Flyers vs. Syracuse Orange: A self-propelled, non-motorized aircraft vsā¦ a single citrus fruit? Very hot take: this will suck. It will be too lame to watch. Unless you are actively trying to place yourself into a light coma, do not even attempt to look at your TV during this game. Iām picking the orange to win because it is roughly the same spherical shape and color as a basketball.
This whole region is basically an animal kingdom version of Super Smash Melee. Ducks are fighting jaguars, beavers are smacking rams upside the head with their paddle tails, the whole thing is essentially one big round of zoologically improbable natural selection.
The preliminary games in this region are all wild cards. We can watch the game tapes (ie. back episodes of National Geographic shows), but there is nothing in this Earthās natural history that can prepare us for the shit that goes down when a beaver fights a ram. The best strategy you have for picking this side of the bracket comes down to sports psychology 101. To catch a basketball, you must think like a basketball. And to pick a winning bracket, you must get a bunch of your friends from college together with some intoxicating substances and wait for the conversation to inevitably turn to Animal Fight Club/ Would You Rather.
The dust only really starts to settle in this region when we find ourselves at the gates of the Final Four, where one creature will emerge victorious. Itās the Roadrunners, because they have just spent the last few weeks running around tricking their opponents into dropping anvils on their own heads from comically high cliffs you arenāt even sure were there in the first place.
Or doing some shit like this
Anyway, yeah. Roadrunner vs Golden Bear Warriors in the final for sure. Hereās the full bracket for your viewing pleasure.
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vaporwave
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areudirty
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
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