the madness that is march

Last year, I presented an extremely successful and accurate way to complete your March Madness bracket. I’m sure that way still works, but there’s a certain fluidity in sports that really requires figuring out new methods of bracketology each year. Whatever that means. Anyways, here is the Molly-approved method of filling out your 2009 March Madness bracket:

My methodology this year is based on how fun it is to watch people fight. A shocking statement, you say? Well, what is sports but individuals and teams meeting in a form of combat? But what if, instead of thinking of these college teams as groups of individuals worthy of their own merit, we thought of them as more interesting famous people?

Here is what I mean. I took the first letter of every team as it was written on the bracket that I downloaded from ESPN. Then, I thought of a famous male (since we’re doing men’s basketball) with a last name that began with that letter. I didn’t know what famous man I was assigning to each team. Here’s how the teams shaped up.

Louisville --> John Lennon
Morehead St. --> Karl Marx
Ohio State --> Roy Orbison
Siena --> William Shakespeare
Utah --> Bill Paxton (I couldn’t think of any last names that started with U, so I went with Paxton, because Utah=Mormons and Paxton plays a Mormon. This was one of the few exceptions in which I knew what man symbolized which team)
Arizona --> Neil Armstrong
Wake Forest --> Steve Wozniak
Cleveland --> Stephen Colbert
West Virginia --> Walt Whitman
Dayton --> Charles Darwin
Kansas --> Henry Kissinger
North Dakota State --> Richard Nixon
Boston College --> Rod Blagojevich
USC --> Socrates (I couldn’t think of any last names that started with U, so I went with the “S” instead)
Michigan St. --> Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Robert Morris --> Joseph Ratzinger
Connecticut --> Dana Carvey
Chattanooga --> Coolio
BYU --> Beethoven
Texas A&M --> John Travolta
Purdue --> Brad Pitt
Northern Iowa --> Nero
Washington --> George Washington
Mississippi St. --> Nicolo Machiavelli
Marquette --> Monet
Utah State --> Romney (See the note about Bill Paxton)
Missouri --> Mussolini
Cornell --> George Clooney
California --> Winston Churchill
Maryland --> Moses
Memphis --> Bernie Madoff
Cal State Northridge --> Bill Cosby
Pittsburgh --> Pele
East Tennessee State -->Albert Einstein
Oklahoma State --> Barack Obama
Tennessee --> Donald Trump
Florida State --> Sigmund Freud
Wisconsin --> Bruce Willis
Xavier --> Malcolm X
Portland State --> Pablo Picasso
UCLA --> Elvis Costello (U was really really hard! Went with the next letter on this one)
VCU -->Martin Van Buren
Villanova --> Vincent Van Gogh
American --> Aesop
Texas --> Harry Truman
Minnesota --> Nelson Mandela
Duke --> Charles Dickens
Binghamton --> Napoleon Bonaparte
North Carolina --> Noah
Radford --> Ronald Reagan
LSU --> David Letterman
Butler --> Bono
Illinois --> Henrik Ibsen
Western Kentucky --> Andy Warhol
Gonzaga --> Bill Gates
Akron --> Johnny Appleseed
Arizona State --> Andre Agassi
Temple --> Leo Tolstoy
Syracuse --> Bruce Springsteen
Stephen F. Austin --> Patrick Swayze
Clemson --> Jesus Christ
Michigan --> Barry Manilow
Oklahoma --> Laurence Olivier
Morgan State --> Maharishi

Now, when I assigned famous men to each letter, I kept them in the order that the teams were placed on the bracket. Then, I filled out my bracket based on what would happen if the two men fought. This was not just a matter of randomly picking names, guys. This involved laying on my floor and very clearly imagining a physical fight between the two contenders.

Here’s how Round One went.
In the Midwest division, Marx trumps Lennon cause Lennon won’t fight as a pacifist. Shakespeare trumps Orbison because while Shakespeare is a little effeminate, at least he’s not blind. Neil Armstrong easily takes Bill Paxton while Colbert defeats Wozniak in a close contest. Darwin takes Walt Whitman by beating Whitman with a turtle. In one of the strangest Round One match-ups, Nixon takes Kissinger. Socrates beats Blagojevich though it’s a very close contest, as Blago never answers a question straight and that pisses the hell out of Socrates. Last, Joseph Ratziner, the man known now as Pope Benedict, takes Mozart because Mozart is weird. You’ve seen Amadeus, right?

In the West, we have two past-their-prime stars dueling, but Coolio is able to pull it out over Dana Carvey, who is too busy doing impressions from the early 1990’s to put up an adequate fight against Coolio’s Fantastic Voyage to victory. Beethoven takes Travolta because he’s not bogged down by the “religion” that starts with the letter S that is known as being very litigious. Nero plays his fiddle around Brad Pitt for the win, while in a very close match, George Washington’s brute strength outtakes Machiavelli’s cunning. It also helps that Machiavelli only sent mercenaries to do the job. Tsk tsk. Romney beats Monet, probably the one person he can beat. Mussolini beats the dapper Clooney, who, while being against everything Mussolini stands for, can’t stand to get hit in that beautiful face. Moses takes out Winston Churchill because of the all-powerful God Factor. Bill Cosby takes out Bernie Madoff cause Madoff is in jail.

Off to some exciting match-ups in the East! Pele has a strong kick, but Einstein knows all about the physics behind the kick and is able to pull out a win. Obama tells Trump, “you’re fired.” Bruce Willis takes out Freud who barely bothered to get up off his couch for the fight, while Malcolm X defeats Picasso. Elvis Costello is just punk enough to get past Van Buren, though the Vans have a win when Van Gogh takes out Aesop. Harry Truman, the man who dropped an atomic bomb, has an easy win over Nelson Mandela, while Bonaparte’s battlefield experience easily overpowers that pansy Charles Dickens.

In the South: Noah (of ark fame) takes out Reagan due to the God Factor (take that conservative Christians!). Bono defeats Letterman just because Letterman can’t be bothered to care. In a bizarre match-up, Warhol takes Ibsen. Bill Gates defeats Johnny Appleseed just by dropping money on him, Tolstoy defeats Agassi, and Springsteen defeats Patrick Swayze because I unfortunately imagined present-day, cancer-fighting Swayze, and not in-his-prime, ass-kicking Swayze. Next year, Swayze. In the easiest match so far, Jesus Christ beats Barry Manilow. The Maharishi takes out Laurence Olivier.

The second round doesn’t really hold any surprises, but the third round is where things start shaping up. Some highlights:
--Charles Darwin faces the Pope. The Pope loses. Critics say that if the fighting pope had been John Paul II, then maybe Darwin would have lost. This pope is just not as powerful. I take that to mean that the team represented by Ratzinger (Robert Morris) was probably better in other years.
--God’s right hand men fare better elsewhere, such as in the west where Moses defeats fascism by taking out Mussolini.
--Bono faces his African aid relief partner when he faces off against Bill Gates. Bono wins, because he has the cooler glasses and the power of rock and roll.

Those highlights lay the groundwork for the Elite Eight. In which:
--Colbert finally admits defeat to Darwin.
--Washington cedes to Moses (God factor)
--Bruce Willis takes out Bonaparte in a very hard-fought match, but as it turns out, Bruce Willis really does die hard.
--Two men with Messiah complexes meet when Bono faces Christ in the South. Obviously, Christ wins, but the crowd could just not believe the symbolism.

To take a step back, Darwin, Moses, Willis and Christ are going to the final four. Those real life teams are: Dayton, Maryland, Wisconsin and Clemson. Sure, that may be a far cry from what all the statisticians are telling you….but did they consider what would happen if men with last names beginning with the same letter as the team fought in my imagination? Of course they didn’t.

In the final four, Darwin defeats Moses cause Moses is soooooooo old testament. Christ defeats Willis. That means the big game will be between Darwin and Christ. I know, my mind is blown too! I can’t even decide who wins…..evolution or the bible. So, I won’t tell you. Decide for yourself and fill out your brackets accordingly. You can thank me when either Dayton or Clemson win the whole tournament. Cause I guarantee you’ll be the only person who picked those teams.