East Region - First Round

It's the same in every office. Every year, some chick wins the bracket contest by picking alphabetically, or by famous alumni. Something stupid, that has no basis in which basketball team is actually better.

Well, men can play this game too. I'm breaking down every game of the tournament filling out our bracket by the old standby - "Who'd win in a Fight."

All the matchups broken down by who would win a fight between the two mascots.

We started with the Midwest First Round now time for the east.

1 North Carolina Tarheels vs 16 Eastern Kentucky Colonels
What is a Tarheel? I don’t know. Hell, North Carolina doesn’t know. They believe it’s a name derived from the early days of the country when the state made a bunch of tar and feathers, or something. They built houses or boats with it.

Granted, that’s kind of out-dated, and I don’t know how to make a foot fight. Updated for modern times, with a sense of history. The Tarheels will be represented by a cigarette. The Surgeon General himself says it has tar in it, and all Tobacco is grown in North Carolina.

So another old dude against a pack of Pall Mall (or Lucky Strike – who cares). He’s bound to end up getting cancer, or save that, he’ll atleast look like Kramer when he turned his apartment into a smokers lounge. Big Tobbacco finally wins one. It’s been a while.

8 Marquette Golden Eagles vs. 9 Michigan State Spartans
Another group with a mascot changed because it’s offensive. Marquette was the Warriors, and then considered using the same lame idea as Harvard of the West Coast. They were almost the Marquette Blue and Gold. Couldn’t even decide on one color - they had to coordinate.

Prior to being the Warriors, Marquette was the Hilltoppers. The only modern application of a hilltopper is the person using a temporary bodily refuse pit when it reaches capacity.

Meanwhile, Spartan has been a slur for both minimalists, and John Amechi-types. Oh, and it is a group of warriors from ancient Greece, but you knew that.

Doesn’t matter which of the three you prefer, but I’m going to assume that none of the three would be able to focus on the battle at hand when a group of stinkbutts is coming after them.

Marquette gets into the second round after Michigan State goes all Caddy Shack when there's "doody" in the pool.

5 USC Trojans vs. 12 Arkansas Razorbacks
What is this? The Greek region?

It isn’t much of a match. I don’t care how wild of a boar the Razorbacks are, Eric Bana would have it roasting with an apple in its mouth in under 10 minutes.

4 Texas Longhorns vs. 13 New Mexico State Aggies
Now, normally, you’d think a farmer could take out a bull. But these aren’t any regular Aggies. No, these are victims-of-political-correctness Aggies. See, their mascot Pistol Pete was determined to be a bad influence, encouraging people to grow handlebar mustaches. Wait, I mean, encouraging gunfights.

Obviously.

So in 2005, Pete had his pistol taken away and was given a lasso. A LASSO! Just like Wonder Woman, Pete carries a lasso and doesn’t have any balls.

This ain’t calf roping, this is division one basketball! If you can’t bring your six shooter, a piece of rope ain’t going to kill a bull.

Lasso Larry is going to be fertilizer soon.

6 Vanderbilt Commodores vs. 11 George Washington Colonials
Why does a university in a land-locked state take its mascot from a ranking in the Navy? To steal from the Geico radio commercial with the biker dude, that doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Then again, a Colonial is someone who lives in a colony. The school is in Washington D.C., despite the fact that it wasn’t recognized as a city until after the Revolutionary War, when there were no more colonies. More mascot stupidity.

I can’t even imagine a fight between these two brain-dead mascots, so we’ll use the Commodore 64 against a log of Swiss Colony summer sausage.

That sausage is the most vile crap known to man. It’s not fit for consumption. Weighing in at approximately 9 pounds per chunk, it is roughly equivalent in size to something you’d find in Pokey’s nightstand.

You could beat the beeping crap out of a C64 with that log of fatty meat product.

3 Washington State Cougars vs. 14 Oral Roberts Golden Eagles
Another Golden Eagles? C’mon.

Nope. I’m using the school’s namesake. Because really, a televangelist false idol versus a cougar would sell some pay per view, or at least give FOX something to put in the slot originally scheduled for Kobe’s tell-all special “If I Hit It, Here’s How it Happened.”

But that’s cruel and unusual punishment. Even I can’t subject Oral Roberts to this fate. That is, if you’ll call 1-800-555-CASH and give me $8 million.

If I’m unable to raise the money, I’ll pit Oral Roberts vs. against a 1984 Mercury Cougar driven by Ryan Leaf.

Now Leaf might not be able to hit an open receiver, but he’d sure be able to commit vehicle manslaughter.

Wazzou drives away with the victory.

7 Boston College Eagles vs. 10 Texas Tech Red Raiders
Eagles may be an endangers species, but they aren’t something in short supply around the NCAA Tournament.

Now we could have the bird fight these Red Raiders, who are presumably suffering from some type of skin condition, or chicken pox, or simply went to see Tor Eckman after deciding that traditional medicine was a scam because they want repeat business.

Without and accurate injury report, I’m hesitant to have the Red Raiders engage in this battle.

So we’ll use the symbolic nature of the mascots. The Eagle - stately, American, balding. The Reds - Commies who were crushed by America without us using any force.

We so own Russia, and anything red.

At the end of this fight, Texas Tech will be waiting in line for toilet paper, or preparing to invade Tokyo. Either way, they’re going home.

2 Georgetown Hoyas vs. 3 Belmont Bruins
Generally drawn as some type of bulldog, Hoya really has no exact definition. Which kind of screws me.

They were the Hilltoppers at one point in history, but I’m out of skid mark jokes already.

I’ll actually go with the official school reasoning, since there aren’t 12 other Hoyas in the tournament.

They say it came from a cheer translated to mean “What Rocks.” So rocks against a bear. I honestly have no idea how you kill a rock, but I know how to kill with a rock.

We just need someone to use the rocks as a weapon. Hmm, do you smell what the blog is cooking?

The Rock, armed with rocks against a bear.

In a match so volatile, there’s only one thing to do. Put it inside a steel cage.

If there’s one thing I learned from watching Yogi, it’s that bears become melancholy when locked up, captive in cages. So its will to fight back will be broken, before it falls to The Peoples Elbow.

Told you I was going to get a wrestler in this match!

Belmont can pancake it’s ass on out of the tournament.