South 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."

Time now for the third region - the East.

1 Ohio State Buckeyes vs. 16 Central Connecticut State Blue Devils
Hey, lucky us, after getting three Eagles in the last region, us fans are now fortunate enough to see two trees square off for supremacy here in the South. The top seeds are first.

Now why are the Devils from CCSU blue? It’s tough to say, one can presume that it’s because of a weakened state caused by eating a piece of three-course dinner gum. The blueberry pie, she remains unstable.

This is the only circumstance I can think of which would cause a person to turn blue, even a devil. We must assume that to go from the natural red state of the devil, to blue it must be rather sick.

Thereby, making consumption even a more precarious effort for the Blue Devils. The Buckeye actually contains amounts of tannic acid considered poisonous to both humans and livestock. One must presume that a Blue Devil falls to the same fate.

At the very least, they’d fall victim to gut rot, which can be very distressing.

In a mascot upset, the top-seeded Buckeyes move on, but their Cinderella story as a plant can’t go much further.

8 Brigham Young Cougars vs. 9 Xavier Musketeers
History has treated Musketeers of all types very kindly. From books, to movies, even candy bars. Named for their weapons of choice, Musketeers had a place in Sweeden, France and several Asian countries.

Since Xavier is a Jesuit university, the nickname is probably derived from the musketeers organized to protect Cardinal Richeliu in the 1600s.
But we’ve already shown a disdain for mascots that represent something from another country.

In US History, the “Three Musketeers” was a nickname for three New Deal-era Supreme Court Justices.

We’ve also shown disdain for repeated use of the same mascot, and have looked for ways to change said mascot. Since we’ve already had a cougar out east, we’ll use the university’s namesake.

So a mormon vs. the Supreme Court of the United States.

This isn’t a match up without precident. In 1879 Reynolds vs. the United States was decided by the Supreme Court, and ruled that polygamy is illegal. The Supreme Court has since reaffirmed that belief on multiple occasions.

My seer stone says BYU's politeness can't get them out of this defeat.

5 Tennessee Volunteers vs. 12 Long Beach State 49ers
This one is rather simple actually. A volunteer is by definition someone who gives a service for no payment.

But a 49er is nickname bestowed upon people who participated in the gold rush of 1849.

‘Tis better to give than to receive the old saying goes.

A Tennessee Volunteer is equipped with a rifle, a 49er with a pick ax and a spaghetti strainer.

Bonus: Coonskin cap > Indiana Jones hat on anyone not named Indiana Jones.

4 Virginia Cavaliers vs. 13 Albany Great Danes
At first, this looked like an easy match. I had previously mentioned having a dog, and Dr. Johnny Fever is a great dane. While he’s good at doing things like rolling over, and eating any people food dropped on the floor, he’s not too terribly good at being a watch dog.

In fact, he sucks at it.

Virginia students also like to call themselves Wahoos. Most people think of Wahoo as the mascot of the Cleveland Indians, but anyone that lives near the Gulf of Mexico knows a Wahoo is a fish.

Dr. Johnny Fever hates the water. He wouldn’t be able to catch a fish under any circumstance.

So it looks like the Cavaliers are en route to a victory of romping proportions.

But during research for the match, it was discovered that the Cavs were represented by a pair of dogs beginning in the 1920s.

The first dog, named Beta, was a mongrel who was hit by a car in the days when cars had bicycle tires, traveled on dirt roads, and generally went about 6 miles per hour.

The second, Seal, is described as a “Cross-eyed black mongrel mutt.”

Now my dog may not be Marmaduke, he could sure kick the hell out of a cross-eyed mongrel.

Especially when you consider that the entire breed is chipping in to defeat the Cavaliers, so he’ll get some snacks from Scooby-Doo and Ron Artest’s dog surely learned a few dirty tricks.

6 Louisville Cardinals vs. 11 Stanford Cardinal
My disdain for the nickname “Cardinal” knows no bounds. They’re a color, and the band said “Hey, lets dress up someone like a tree.”

I don’t even feel that it’s worthy of penning a story of the match. Suffice it to say that Louisville will make a nest in the sissified tree mascot, and probably poop on it too.

3 Texas A&M Aggies vs. 14 Pennsylvania Quakers
Some will tell you that if someone is “quaking” from fear the name is derived from middle English. Others will say it’s because they’re shaking like the ground in an earthquake.

I say it’s because the Quakers are all a bunch of pansies. “Oh, no violence, we don’t want to fight!” Shut up, you couldn’t even be Amish right, and all you have to do for that is NOTHING.

Hell, they could be right and it comes from something else. What the hell do we know about the etymology of words, we’re talking mascots man, mascots.

See, Quakers are opposed to violence. This religious group is also known as the “Society of Friends.”

Meanwhile, Texas A&M likes to sets it on fire.

The Aggies make instant oats out of Penn. Ivy League, pfft.

7 Nevada Wolfpack vs. 10 Creighton Blue Jays
Finally, a school that changed its nickname not because of a drunken student, or pressure from special interest groups. No, in the 1920’s, they changed it because there were too many other schools using Hilltoppers.

I applaud this.

The Blue Jay isn’t some pansy bird either. While it’s not a falcon or condor or pteradactyl - Anyone who’s ever happened across a blue jay nest because they needed eggs to throw at someone’s house and were unable to get the standard chicken variety because their mother kept count in the refridgerator knows they can mess you up pretty good.

And by pretty good, we mean they’ll peck the living crap out of your head.
However, when’s the last time you saw a dog climb a tree for some escar-Blue Jay?

Doesn’t happen.

Fazekas!

2 Memphis Tigers vs. 15 North Texas Mean Green
I had an unofficial rule about our mascot bracket. I didn’t want to use other athletes, or teams when it comes to referring to the mascots. (IE the San Francisco 49ers couldn’t be used in an argument for Long Beach St.)

But all rules aren’t hard-and-fast. Seems that the Mean Green actually get their name from Joe Greene. Many of us remember him simply as the dude in the Coke commercial.

Remember though, that he was in there only because he was a badass to begin with. I mean, after a game no one makes Peyton Manning smile by offering him some Coke. He’s already smiling because he has a slight mental defect.

If you offered Michael Irvin some Co…. no, its not even worth it.

We’ve had Brigham Young and Oral Roberts - but they started the school and named it after themselves. That’s not badass. Kicking the crap out of people to the point where the entire school takes on your nickname?

Badass.

The other rule I had is that there had to be a legitimate reason to have one team advance - like the Blue Devils being poisioned. I don’t have one for this match up.

I just don’t want Joe Greene whooping my ass. He’ll find a way past the Tigers.