Putting non-college basketball items in a 64-team bracket around mid-March has for years been the most clichéd post in the world of writing on the internet. Think of a topic and it has surely already been breacketized a million different ways. Movies? Yup. TV shows? Yup. Saturday Night Live cast members. That was an eventful one. Fast food? Yep, and its always a disaster. Pop culture bracket posts lacks any sense of creativity. It is a concept worn so thin that it is practically translucent. A slight gust of wind risks ripping the genre apart.
But dammit this year is different. We need brackets. Oh, do we ever need brackets.
With the cancellation of all of sports for the foreseeable future due to the coronavirus pandemic, we all need something sports in our lives. And we’ll take anything whether its professional darts or ninth division Argentinian soccer. (They call it fútbol) I, for one, clamored for a rumored NCAA Tournament bracket put together by the selection committee; a last bit of false hope in a cold, dark March. Alas, that bracket would never come to be and my false hope could not even muster the energy the get its face out of the March mud.
So we need sports. Or something like sports. For now, this is my offering, and it’ll have to do. It’s a 64-person bracket of some of the most beloved Michigan State Spartans of all time. The goal: To name our favorite Spartan ever. The nominees were solicited on social media. Everybody in this bracket comes from that nomination process. Ranking the names started with some obvious top seeds and funneled down based loosely upon number of nominations. At a certain point, probably the five seeds, there are very little margins between nominees. This is all to say; I don’t give a single damn about your complaints about the seeding. It almost couldn’t be more unscientific and good god we’ve got a pandemic going on outside quit complaining about stupid stuff! (Just kidding, you can get mad about this if it makes you feel better. Maybe that will lead to you staying inside and typing angry things at me instead of going out to a crowded bar or something. I’m happy to play my part in the pursuit of better public health.) And if your favorite Spartan get left off the list . . . I’m sorry. You should have followed me on Twitter and nominated them.
Today is the bracket reveal. Voting will start will individual regions tomorrow.
Without much further ado . . . here is the bracket!