Midwest 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 start with the Midwest

1 Florida Gators vs 16 Jackson State Tigers
This is a tough match up to call right off the bat. We have two vicious members of the Animal Kingdom. The Gator and the Tiger.

I know what you are thinking, there’s no tiger farms where you can go wrestle a tiger, so the tiger has to be able to win this battle.

However, that can be countered with the fact that there’s no gators living with a couple of alternative lifestyle gentlemen in Las Vegas.

I’m torn. So I have to look at the location of the fight. It is in New Orleans. A city under sea level, with a ton of water. We all know that cats hate water. So while the Tiger is tepid and tremmoring at the thought of getting wet, the alligator is having Tony’s entrails for a snack and leaving the carcass to rot in the sun. Suck it, Seigfried.

Gators Advance to face the winner of:

8 Arizona Wildcats vs 9 Purdue Boilermakers
This is a match up of ambiguous mascots. I’ve referred to women as wildcats, my parents used to tell me not to feed the wild cats in the alley, and the general depiction is a badassed giant cat. It’s good though, since this tournament is compromised with 13 or 14 Wildcat mascots.

For this, we’ll stretch the match up to include a Wildcat(ter). An oilman.

A boilermaker is an alcoholic beverage, or a type of craftsman. Not since Randall Cunningham was laying tile has an athlete been accused of working. But in college, pretty much everyone can be accused of drinking. Ergo, the Boilermaker in question is a whiskey/beer concoction.

How the hell does an alcoholic beverage defeat an oil baron? It doesn’t. Well, unless a DUI Checkpoint is in place, but I'll assume that police in New Orleans have other things to worry about. 'Zona advances.

5 Butler Bulldogs vs 12 Old Dominion Monarchs
This battle of the mascots is harder than I thought. Why? Because I’ve got to come up with all these fights with unique reasoning using the same stupid mascots 85 times. The Bulldogs are one such mascot.

For Old Dominion we’re faced with another question. Is a monarch a butterfly or a member of a royal family? Well, last I checked, this is America, and the only time there was a monarchy in this country a gentleman named George Washington killed him Jack Bauer style with a set of wooden teeth. Or something like that, I’m not a history major.

So it’s a match up of a bulldog versus a butterfly. You cannot be serious. This is no match up at all.

4 Maryland Terrapins vs 13 Davidson Wildcats
Yippee, another wildcat. I hate this match up already.

But I like animals. In fact, my wife and I have both a cat, and a turtle. Our cat is wild, let me tell you. She shreds cardboard boxes to get fed, and has put claw marks in every piece of furniture we’ve ever bought. Therefore, this match up is Sophie the Cat vs Mortimus the Turtle.

The cat has been obsessed with the turtle since he came into the house. But the turtle is impervious. The turtle sits there inside the tank thinking that the cat will feed it.

So constantly faced with a threat from Sophie the wildcat, Morty is untouched. This is the mascot match up version of rope-a-dope.

Fear the turtle, Maryland moves on.

6 Notre Dame Fightin’ Irish vs 11 Winthrop Eagles

Lucky the Leprechaun has his wonderful marshmallows. Not much of a weapon when it comes to facing a vicious bird. But Lucky has a secret weapon. He’s a good friend of Snap, Crackle and Pop – The Rice Krispies.

Lucky has to know that the weakness of birds is rice, and I’m sure he and Captain Crunch have screwed with Toucan Sam more than once trying to get him to chow down.

These lessons will surely be applied in the match up against Winthrop. Notre Dame advances past Winthrop by feeding them rice and watching them explode.

3 Oregon Ducks vs 14 Miami of Ohio Redhawks

Miami used to be known as the Redskins before adopting the less-offensive nickname Redhawks in 1997.

Also considered for the new nickname was the Miamis. Had there been a match up involving the Miami of Ohio Miamis, I may have exploded like the Winthrop Eagles.

Our mascot match up makes a stand, because, well, PETA is already going to be all over my ass for forcing animals to fight to the death, and advocating the rice-caused explosion of Winthrop.

So we’re using the Redskin in this fight.

Oregon’s duck has often been depicted as Donald Duck.

While we’re willing to take on Native American groups and PETA, we know two things: First, it’s never cool to go outside without pants, second do not screw with Disney. Therefore, I'm going with just a mean-ass duck like the one that chased me around the park as a kid when I’d tease it with bread (if only I had rice!).

The Redskins would slaughter the ducks, no matter how mean-ass. Don’t worry though, none of the carcass would go to waste.

(And we really don’t want any Native American Activists mad at us. We know you were screwed. PETA though, can really kiss our ass.)

7 UNLV Runnin’ Rebels vs 10 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
Have you ever seen Hey Reb, UNLV’s mascot? Tark looked younger than this anti-Whipper Snapper.

Now, old guy being chased by bees can’t end well for old guy.

He’s got two options, break a hip and be stung to death. Or press his Life Alert necklace and get stung to death. He’s screwed no matter how you look at it.

Georgia Tech rambles on.

2 Wisconsin Badgers vs 15 Texas A&M – Corpus Christi Islanders.
Since I have no idea what the bloody hell an Islander is, I'm left in a bit of a pickle. They way I see it, there’s only two options.

Islander Haku from the old WWF with his tongan deathgrip could be the designated representative, but I mostly remember him as Meng.

Instead, I’ll go with Chris Simon, who’s probably the most newsworthy Islander these days. His 25 game suspension has him in a bit of a pickle, too. He’s the representative designate.

Now, Chris Simon vs a badger isn’t a fair fight, because he’d cross check the badger into submission. But to me, Gary Bettman looks a little bit like a badger. And we’ve seen that fight – Wisconsin advances.

Chris Simon is a bitch.