It's one of my favorite times of the year, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. For three weeks, I lose myself in the great games, the upsets and the drama that unfolds each year. For years, people from college basketball experts to just regular people - who wouldn't know that 12 seeds have a historic propensity to beat 5 seeds in the tournament - fill out a bracket before the tournament. It usually it costs them a buck or two to enter a tournament pool at work and the person who garners the most points can take home some serious money
I won a couple tournament pools I entered when Michigan won the National Championship in 1989. It put a lot of money into my pocket and gave me the idea that I knew I was doing when I'd fill out the brackets. But I haven't been close to winning another one that I've entered ever since. In fact, I haven't filled out a bracket in something like five years - mainly because it's much easier to watch the games when I don't have an emotional attachment to a team that I have going to the Final Four getting smoked in the second round by a low-seeded team from some directional school from Tennessee.
Cindy almost won an NCAA bracket contest a number of years ago by doing something like this when she was making her picks: "Let's see, where's Pepperdine? Oh, Malibu? Oh, well, we've been there before. I'll take Pepperdine. OK, let's see, California. What's their team nickname? The Bears? Oh, I like bears, I'll take them. Hmm, what colors are are LSU? Purple and gold? Those are nice colors, I'll take them." I mean, seriously, it was literally like that. I think she came in third or fourth in the pool.
But thanks to my buddy, Kevin Gertsen, who sent along this bracket that you can really sink your teeth into. This is a bracket of favorite meats to barbecue or cook on a stove top, done up like you'd find an NCAA Men's Basketball bracket. (Click on the picture at right for a larger view.) It actually comes from Paul Lukas who writes rather quirky columns at ESPN.com. You can click here to link up to Lukas' site where he gives his reasons for picking one meat over the other.
It's broken down into regions - the Pork region, the Sausage region, the Beef region and the miscellaneous, or Meatcellaneous region, with different types of meats seeded in the regions.
It's not a big surprise that the winner of the meat tournament is the Standing Rib Roast, although I think they deserved a No. 1 seeding in the Meat regional. It really is tough to beat Bacon as a cooked meat. Bacon-wrapped anything is just super. I've even joked about making bacon-wrapped bacon on the grill at some point.
It's kind of fun to look at the different meats and where - in Paul Lukas' mind - they ended up in the tournament pool. But quite honestly, I think Lukas has a lot of time on his hands to come up with this masterpiece.
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