Madness:
The Bracket
Dear reader, it is here! It is time! The bracket is set and this Thursday March officially starts!
My official Bracket has a very boring Final Four: Three Number One Seeds in University of Houston, Duke and Auburn. My last pick is the five seeded Texas Tech - Tech is a fantastic team that can score in bunches. I have them facing the University of Houston in the Championship game. An all Texas Championship game in the Alamodome in San Antonio - It’s so poetic it almost makes me cry. Here is my whole bracket -
Call me a homer if you must, but I can’t pick against my Coogs. Of course, we all know that every bracket will be busted by the end of the first weekend - upsets will happen and the Madness will spread.
I made a second bracket as well - based on which mascot would beat the other team’s in a one versus one fight on a basketball court. This Final Four in the Mascot bracket are as follows - Florida Gators, UC San Diego Tritons, Duke Blue Devils, and the UCLA Bruins.
The Final is the Tritons vs The Blue Devils - two ethereal entities battling in the celestial plane - a demigod vs a fallen angel. The Son of Posiden vs Evil Incarnate. The match goes to the Blue Devil - the hellish powers of the devil being too much for a mere demigod. The whole bracket is below, as are the reasons for the six hardest matches for me to choose.
The Six Hardest Choices in the Mascot v. Mascot Bracket:
Some of you will disagree with my choices for the Mascot v Mascot battles. Below are my justifications for the six hardest matches I had to choose.
8 Louisville Cardinal v 9 Creighton Blue Jay:
The Blue Jay versus the Cardinal. The classic red vs. blue. This wasn’t a match that I could just choose off the top of my head. I’m not an ornithologist - my first instinct was to choose the one I thought was prettier - The Cardinal, but you’ve come to expect more from me than superficiality. So I went to Wikipedia and now I AM an ornithologist. Here’s what I learned -
The adult Blue Jay can reach a size of up to 12 inches and 3.5 ounces, while the adult Cardinal only gets to 9.3 inches and 2.29 ounces. In addition to the size difference, while both Cardinals and Blue Jays eat nuts, berries, and bugs, the Blue Jay is known to eat meat - pushing the advantage towards the Blue Jay. The Blue Jay gets obliterated, however, in its second round matchup with the Auburn Tiger.
2 Alabama Crimson Tide v 15 Robert Morris Colonial:
The hardest part about choosing the Crimson Tide games was deciding which mascot to actually use for Alabama. I went with the famous Elephant - it’s in the logo and they have an elephant on the sidelines. It was easier to see an elephant on a basketball court over the tide.
That being said, once I decided on the elephant, this decision became easy. The Elephant stomps(both literally and figuratively) the Colonial. The best weapon the colonial would have would be a musket. That’s not piercing the hide of the mighty elephant. Elephant parades itself all the way to the Elite 8, losing to the Blue Devil, a defeat it won’t forget.
1 University of Houston Cougar v 16 SIU Edwardsville Cougar:
This match was hard to choose just based on the fact that it’s the same animal. How do you choose which cougar wins? Having already become an ornithologist during this exercise, I thought it would be prudent to become a felinologist, which I basically already am, since I have a cat. In my latest zoology venture, I decided to base my decision based on the city closest to the natural habitat of the Cougar.
University of Houston is located in Houston, TX(duh) and Texas has an estimated cougar population of 5,000, while SIU Edwardsville is located in Edwardsville, Illinois - a state completely devoid of cougars. University of Houston wins this matchup, and I swear it’s not a homer pick - my original bracket is my homer bracket.
8 Gonzaga Bulldog v 9 Georgia Bulldog
Another battle of two of the same animal - made harder by the fact that, unlike the cougar, bulldogs don’t have a natural habitat. Well, I guess they do - the laps of their owners. Bulldogs are a notoriously goofy breed of dog. Seriously, have you ever been around one? They are goofy little drool monsters who love to spend their days laying around.
I was stumped when it came to deciding this match - how do I choose which bulldog is better - until I learned that Georgia has a live bulldog mascot named Uga - pictured below:
I can’t disappoint that face. Uga and Georgia won this round.
1 Florida Gator v 2 St. John’s Red Storm
This decision wasn’t a hard one, but I felt like I need to justify my reasoning. For most of the bracket, I chose the elemental and natural events as the winners. How do you win against a storm? It’s relentless and unkillable - but it’s not the only mascot in the bracket that is relentless and unkillable.
The modern alligator is predicted to have emerged 37 million years ago - 37 MILLION YEARS - and has barely changed in that time. The alligator's ancestors, the first crocodilian animals, survived the KT extinction - as Sterling Archer likes to remind us - the same extinction that wiped the dinosaurs off the face of the earth. If the alligator can survive the KT and live on for another 60 million years, they can survive one measly storm.
5 Clemson Tiger v 7 UCLA Bruin
This matchup was hard for me. Both the Tiger and the Bruin cruised through the first three rounds, destroying humans and smaller animals alike - two apex predators effortlessly tearing through their weaker opponents. Now they face each other - and once again, my burgeoning zoology career came into play. I needed to delve into the stats.
An adult Bengal Tiger(I chose Bengal because Clemson did, I am not slighting the equally majestic eight other types of tiger) can reach up to a length of 10.5 feet and 500 pounds. A Bruin, which is apparently Dutch for Brown Bear, can grow up to 9 feet tall and 1300 pounds. The sheer size of the Bruin and their notoriously tough skin makes it my pick against the Bengal tiger - putting them in the Final Four to be burned by the eventual champion Blue Devil.
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So, dear reader, those are my two brackets. One I chose based on my knowledge of basketball and a little homerism, the other I chose based largely on my knowledge of the animal kingdom. However you choose your bracket, dear reader, I wish you all the luck and hope you don’t get busted.
Fair warning though - the bust will happen. It’s March. Nobody beats the Madness.
Walker’s Weekly Wrecommendations
Each week I’m gonna review and recommend random things - TV shows, music, or a restaurant. IDK. Whatever I feel like. This is my blog.
This week's Triple W is HBO’s comedy series “The Righteous Gemstones”. Created by Danny McBride, the genius behind “Eastbound and Down” and “Vice Principals”, The Righteous Gemstones takes a dark, comedic look at the greed and corruption behind the fictional Gemstone Ministries Church, a mega church led by Eli Gemstone, played by John Goodman, and his three morally bankrupt children, all vying to be the next leader of the ministry. The fourth and final season of Righteous Gemstones is currently airing on Sunday nights.
NEXT WEEK: Walker’s Wranting’s presents “Madness - The Bust”