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Royals Review NCAA bracket challenge, 2017 edition

Where we focus on orange balls, for a change.

By Matthew LaMar
NCAA Basketball: ACC Conference Tournament Final-Notre Dame vs Duke Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Sports fans love tournaments the same way that meteorologists love storms. They are, surely, the most unpredictable and exciting of events, where correct or incorrect predictions ring for days, and where stubbornness is at least a good a quality as intelligence.

Tournaments are better than storms in many ways, not the least of which that tournaments will never destroy your house—at least not directly. This is because tournaments carry bragging rights. Correctly predict a tournament, or best predict one, and you have attained respectability out of nothing, a truly magical feat. Harry Potter would be proud, if he weren’t betting money on quidditch (again).

I’m burying the lede here under a mountain of metaphors and murderous montages of ardent alliteration; apologies. What I’d like to say is this: welcome to the 2017 Royals Review NCAA March Madness bracket.

Before I link the bracket, please consider the following statement. If your ESPN username does not match your RR username, please name your bracket name to match your RR username. Lurkers may lurk proudly and need not abide by this rule. Those of you who are not lurkers please make it easier on us all, so that we may gloat or cower at whomever deserves the gloating or cowering.

Now that that’s out of the way, here are the instructions for participating!

  1. Go to the ESPN Tournament Challenge at http://games.espn.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/2017/en/
  2. If you don't already have an ESPN profile, sign up-it's free and there are no emails involved
  3. Under the 'My Groups' tab click 'Find a Group' and search for 'Royals Review - 2017' or click this link
  4. Enter the password of burymearoyal and join the group
  5. You can then, under 'My Bracket,' choose your teams until the first round of 64 begins

Last year, we had a record of 106 brackets entered, and I’m looking to break that this year (you may only enter one bracket per account, so don’t try to stuff the bracket list). The top five were as follows:

  1. WINNER: 1040X
  2. SECOND PLACE: philofthenorth
  3. THIRD PLACE: GatorCat
  4. TIED FOURTH: EFletchKC and fbsgw

I wish luck to all of you, but only in a superficial and empty way so as to hope for the dominance of my own bracket.

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