The BS Bracket Challenge Update

Ordinarily, we check in on how the BS challenge is going and report back to you. This year, for whatever reason, our focus level has waned around these parts. Maybe it was the cellar finish (thanks, Coach!), maybe is was our platform transitioning in the middle of the NCAA’s craziest time. Whatever the reason, we have neglected your brilliance and we’ll change that right now. As we head into tonight’s Final Four in “North Texas,” here is how things look.

(And, as an aside, how dumb is this “North Texas” nonsense? They do this with the Super Bowl, too – i.e., “South Florida” – and I can only assume it’s a marketing gimmick. Are they worried people will be like “I hate Dallas – screw the Final Four!” Or “Miami is for sweaty guys in tight Ed Hardy shirts like Boilerdowd – the hell with going to that Super Bowl!” And if so, are they hoping people won’t notice where they are when they get there? “Heyyyyyy, wait…this is where the Dallas Cowboys play! I’ve been duped!”)

Sadly, there were only 158 entries into the BS Bracketalysis group. This is a far cry from the glory days when the idea of doing online bracket challenges were sort of novel. We originally did ours on Yahoo and managed to break Yahoo by having too many entrants (true story). So we switched to the hated ESPN, which I have to say, the Tourney Challenge app is pretty good and was very easy to use when it came to entering picks. Finding other groups, that could still use some work. Anyway, moving on…

A great many of you still have a champion pick alive, but nobody has anyone but Florida (except for one person, who we’ll get to in a bit). So this means that essentially, anybody with Florida winning it all can indeed move up the standings, but of course everyone else with Florida will move along with you.

Tied for first are PharmBoiler and boilerfan80 3 (who both had both Florida and Wisconsin in the Final Four) and sit in the 97.7 percentile. Well done, gentlemen (or ladies – not judging). But neither can obtain any more points.

What’s interesting is that more than 20 (I stopped counting) can actually overtake our leaders in the clubhouse heading into the Final Four. So to continue the golf analogy, these two had a great tournament and are now sipping frosty beers at the mahogany bar, hoping against hope that nobody has a good finish.

Ordinarily, it’s pretty simple at this point – it’s usually down to a couple of people or sometimes nobody even has a chance. But for purposes of our little challenge, this could get fun.

If Florida wins it all by beating Wisconsin in the title game, then we will have a three-way tie among RyanWillWinAgain, Tourney-less and keenghunter1, with the winner determined by tiebreaker. If Florida wins but Wisconsin does not advance to the title game, the winner will be Boilers1993 1. If Wisconsin happens to win it all, yigzat 1 will look like the genius we all know he or she is. If Florida doesn’t advance to the title game but Wisconsin does and then loses… then we might see boilerfan80 4 as the winner. It’s enough to make your head spin.

Thanks, as always, to everyone who participated. Remember, the winner gets to appear on the Handsome Hour (if they so desire) as a featured guest to explain to us how being a genius feels. (Well, I mean, we know… so they’d be on to explain how being a genius feels to you.)

Final Four excitement from a stadium that’s actually too big for football, let alone basketball, tonight on….TBS?

Very funny.