"Yep. March Madness," you permitted, nodding grimly to a coworker as you pretended to find joy in filling out a bracket. A bracket, you dryly note, uninterestedly filling in the blanks, that is filled with teams that are playing games that matter. As opposed to playing games that don't matter, or not playing any games at all.
It's demoralizing enough for your favorite (?) college basketball team to not make any sort of post-season play, but an NCAA tournament bracket is a tangible, constant reminder that Ohio State isn't in that or any other bracket. If you filled one out, you'd be forgiven for succumbing to the hollow feeling in your gut and just putting Northwestern in the title game and winning by ten thousand points.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's a sad, lonely existence. I don't want that for you, and neither do the rest of us at Eleven Warriors. You deserve better, and so we (and special thanks to our own Kyle Jones for his help on this) conked our skulls together and created this, an Ohio State campus-powered bracket that is sure to tickle your Nostalgia Zone.
(click on image to enlarge)
Some notes:
- No one will ever solve the riddle of Best Columbus Pizza, except that we can be sure that people not from Columbus will trash its pizza until the end of time
- Please do not send me any death threats because of jokes about Jim Tressel
- North campus is a lovely, lively place (for nerds), even moreso with the recent renovations and buildings (for nerds)
- Your hot take about Chittenden is probably wrong and influenced by two to five years of Stockholm Syndrome
In any event, though this is more of a discussion generator and less of a true bracket, I felt that it was important that we collectively cast off the shackles of the 2016-2017 men's basketball season, and get back to arguing amongst ourselves about what's really important: pizza, and how good or bad High Street actually is These Days. I've appropriated the official NIT bracket for that purpose, and in doing so, I hope that we can find ours during this long, dark offseason.
