More March Sadness

If you are an American male who has entered a bracket pool, chances are that your slack-jawed, vapid, bottled-blonde girlfriend whose life centers around Vera Bradley bags, apple mojitos, leggings, spinning class and VH1 is soundly beating you. Yep, that doe-eyed sports naif who picked all #1 seeds to make the Final Four using logic like "Carolina Blue looks like Tiffany Blue" and (perhaps, more stupidly) "who am I to challenge the logic of the selection committee" will probably win. And you, who watched every BracketBuster game and debated to no end on the ESPN.com message boards the merits of Texas over North Carolina will end up with a bracket full of red.

7 of the Elite 8 teams are 1 or 2 seeds. Oregon, as the lone 3-seed, is the underdog. What this means is that there will be a shitton of amazing games that no casual basketball fan will give a shit about. Maybe we (i.e. everyone outside of Storrs, CT) got spoiled with Miracle Mason's run last year, along with surprising Sweet 16 appearances by the likes of Bradley. This year, the lowest seed in the tourney was UNLV (a 7), and UNLV is about as close to evil as a college basketball team can get. Arguably, the sentimental favorite was USC with their we-have-no-stars, do-it-for-our-fallen-homie ethic, but the zebras ceremoniously stomped on their glass slipper with 10 minutes left in the game and awarded the Elite 8 nod to a team led by an individual whose appearance and class is reminiscent of caucasian Jerry Springer guests.

So, given the lack of a true underdog story, I must do what all Americans typically do: root for the teams from schools with the most intelligent and reasonable student bodies. Thus, here's to UCLA and Georgetown. Rooting for Memphis is excusable because they're a mid-major, but any affiliation with Kansas (especially if you still live in Kansas or anywhere in the Midwest outside Chicago) probably means you order steak at every meal, are anti smoking-ban, drink canned beer, don't know what edamame is and don't own a passport. Need I say more.