The Origins and Future of The Bracket of Awesome

February of 2011, I was in my second semester of my Sophomore year at Lincoln High School in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. I was tired of the day-to-day tediousness of my class schedule and was not looking for a job just yet so there appeared to be no real escape except for the short blurb of insanity that is college basketball's March Madness tournament.

The tournament usually runs from mid-March to early-to-mid-April and gets every college basketball fanatic or sport-obsessed viewer pumped up with the wild unpredictability of a Cinderella team or the buzzer-beaters that are remembered 22 years later (Christian Laettner at Duke). But as quickly as it steals our hearts... it's gone.

The bracket-style tournament goes way too quickly for most of us and it makes our April's sort of depressing in a way. That's why I thought of the Bracket of Awesome. The BOAwe is a 7-week, 64-seed tournament of foods, sports-related items, people, phrases, memes, trends, movies, music, and other basic pop-culture related items that make the world smile and shake their heads in amazement at the possibility that something could be so cool, funny, relevant or just plain awesome.

At first, I made the brackets using good 'ole Microsoft Works Spreadsheet feature, printed the weekly bracket and went around getting votes from an odd number of my closest friends. As you can probably tell, it wasn't expected to be more than a one year deal that nobody would take seriously or really care about (other than nominees Alex Neeb and Nick Zurawski). I don't think I ever got more than fifteen votes in one round. No matter the total, it was fun for people involved and I thought about bringing it back another year....

Inaugural Bracket of Awesome 2011 Winner: Betty White

This picture wasn't exactly the best advertisement for the bracket.

Sometime in between March 2011 and March 2012, Facebook introduced a new entirely-free app which allowed users, groups, and pages to post polls which had the capability of only being voted on by fans or being spread to a wide variety of people in a sort of quiet advertising campaign. It was genius and the reason why the Bracket of Awesome became what it is today.

On February 9th, 2012, I had an idea to put four local heroes (Jake Raflik, Cal Thomas, Cole Walters, and Nathaniel Hoefs) and start using this free facebook app to it's full advantage, thus spreading the word about this epic bracket. When March came, I expected a solid showing of fifty-or-so votes and an eventual winner of either Morgan Freeman or one of the Wisconsin Rapids characters. The results were what I expected besides the one round that will be remembered as the greatest week in bracketing history, the final four match-ups of Morgan Freeman vs. Large Amounts of Money and Cole Walters vs. Jake Raflik.

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with Cole Walters, if you happen to have the pleasure of residing in Wisconsin or you've ever attended a Wisconsin-based sporting event. The man is a champion of all sorts, uniting Lincoln High School in cheering on the school's teams and igniting chants that will go down in Lincoln history. He may be short-tempered but he's The Man, the Myth, the Legend Cole Walters and there's not much arguing against that.

Jake Raflik is basically the most individualistic human being I have ever become acquainted with. He was basically my sidekick that year in Intro to Web Design and Psychology classes and was a big part of uplifting everyone around him literally every day. He fronted a heavy rock band, rode bulls, and in his youth, occasionally hissed at people. On top of all that, he had a glorious faux-hawk.

His pose says philosopher, while everything else screams "awesome".

These two were pretty obsessed with recruiting people to vote for them (sometimes overlapping, resulting in back-stabbing) and it was a hilarious week of fake (at least I hope it was fake) tension.

The results of this final four match-up? After 201 votes from Rapids, Madison, New Jersey, and yes... even Australia: Cole Walters 108 - Jake Raflik 93.

Bracket Of Awesome Year 2 Winner (2012): Cole Walters 

All he does is win, win, win. No matter what.

Cole beat out Morgan Freeman in a closely-contested matchup, winning 49-46. Click here for the entire 2012 bracket of results.

2013 was one of the best years ever and even with a terrific field of local nominees (Logan Zimmerman, Valerie Tonn, Ben Cattanach, and Robert Gawlitta), the BOAwe ended up slowly losing traction and ended up with a weak (still awesome though, don't get me wrong) champion in "Vacations".

Bracket of Awesome Year 3 (2013) Winner: Vacations

Meh, vacations never played hockey, bought pizza for an entire class of students, allowed karaoke day, or was Ben Cattanach at any point in time.

The fact that the bracket was lacking in votes didn't bother me one bit as it was still fun and made people smile and/or laugh for a couple seconds and that's really the only reason this bracket exists and I do what I do, to make people enjoy life a smidgen more. That's why I handed over the Bracket of Awful (RIP 2012-2013) to somebody else, it was just too much work for something that brought up awful topics like "Hitler" and "The Potato Famine". Although, when those two faced off against each other... amazing.  I'm just amazed that the bracket went from this...

to what it is today.

With all that said, the Bracket of Awesome has returned and I need any fans to be as patient as possible as Facebook has removed their free polling app and let's face it, I am not paying for something we had available for free for two years. First round polling will take place on pollcode.com at approximately Midnight Central Standard Time. It'll only take one more click and one more minute of your awesome time. If this new voting website does not work, we may have to move the bracket to 2011 nominee Nick Zurawski's Bracket Bonanza facebook group. I will make sure to publicly address that on the Bracket of Awesome Facebook page, if that change becomes necessary.

Anyways, keep a look out on the facebook page as I will post links to polls ASAP. The nominees are glorious this year (as always) and will make you proud to be alive in 2014.

Thank you for reading this (unless that's you Zuckerburg... you know what you did),

Andy Todd

Thunder Calmed By Heat

Last night, the Miami Heat defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder 103-81. This garnered quite a strong change of public opinion on topics like Miami's chances in the East and OKC's chances of ever winning. Here are my quick thoughts on the game, the NBA's trade deadline, and many other topics in bullet form.

Photo via thebiglead.com

The MVP race is tightening, but has yet to change back in Lebron's favor.

- I have completely flipped the switch on my Finals prediction back to Thunder vs. Heat. The Heat showed me a determination to win that I had not seen since last Summer. I should have seen this coming but like many others, I was under the belief that the Indiana Pacers had passed up Miami with their big men and MVP-caliber player in Paul George. In case you hadn't noticed, Paul George has slipped out of the MVP race due to waning offensive skills as the all-star break has passed. I'm taking Miami in five.

- Lebron is now back up to 2nd in the MVP race behind Kevin Durant with no other clear contenders in sight.

- The NBA's All-Star Weekend should be held in New Orleans once every five years. It's the perfect party venue in the United States.

- The Skills competition did not need a relay race aspect added to it, but it worked.

- The Three-Point Contest was the best it's been in years thanks to the addition of the "money ball rack". Really fun stuff.

- The Shooting Stars and Dunk Contest's formats should be killed immediately after the travesty that was last weekend. 

- What happened to the Denver Nuggets? I realize you need to be nine games over .500 to make the playoffs in the west but I miss watching Ty Lawson, Wilson Chandler, and (out for the season) Javale "Shaqtin' A Fool" McGee. 

- The Spurs make no sense at all with how they're winning. No Tony Parker, no Manu Ginobili, no Kawhi Leonard, and rarely do we see Tim Duncan at 100%. Yet this team is winning with Patty Mills, Marco Belinelli, and Danny Green. Gregg Popovich is a ridiculously good head coach and one of the best to ever do his job.

- Your trade deadline winner? The 76ers and the Pacers. Philly acquired a whole ton of crap they'll never have any use for and left the day with a great chance at the #1 pick in next year's draft along with 7 second-round draft picks. At least two of those selections will work out greatly. Sam Hinkie is building a budding franchise in the Philadelphia 76ers. The Pacers did a great job at dumping off Danny Granger's contract and acquiring a clutch shooter in Evan Turner. Turner has a lot of potential and it'll be exciting to see how he fits in against Miami in the obvious Eastern Conference Finals.

- If I had to re-draft the 2013 NBA draft, I'm taking Giannis Antetokounmpo first because I'm a mad man who is in love with the Greek Freak. (Keep in mind, you'll need to look back insanely deep into my twitter feed but I started his bandwagon). 

- I can't wait for Baseball season.

- Reggie Miller should never be allowed to announce anything again after the rough weekend he had in New Orleans.

- That all-star game was awesome, as was the halftime performance by Trombone Shorty, Dr. John, Janelle Monae, Earth, Wind, & Fire (Sorry if I left anybody out, it was a busy night).

- Baron Davis has a future in acting. 

- Steve Nash has a future in cinematography.

- You have a future in being awesome.

- True Detective is a great television show (on HBO 9 PM EST)

Recommendation #1: The Six Minute Tracking Shot Everyone Needs To See

CONTAINS SPOILER ALERT ON HBO'S TRUE DETECTIVE!!!

The last six minutes were all filmed on one incredible six minute long tracking shot with no interruption. You don't even need to watch True Detective to know that this clip above is insanely difficult to film and get as right as this show did. Just. Plain. Amazing. This show is escalating up my all-time list.

Marcus Smart Acts Like A Normal Human Being With Emotions

How many games should he get for pushing a fan? I wouldn't call it "classless" as much as I would an 

emotionally-charged reaction. It was the final 10 seconds of a close game after all. Bottom line is some fans 

are a-holes and some players just aren't built with shields of armor where they never react like Jackie 

Robinson (not trying to say the one fan's trash-talk was anywhere near Robinson's career of racial slurs). I'd 

give Smart the week off. The whole Oklahoma State team is kind of turning dysfunctional and everybody 

needs a mini-break from being on ESPN constantly. NOW, for the part nobody else will be talking about 

until the initial wave of twitter-reaction-resulting-in-depressingly-racial-Deadspin-article is over. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0NdJahHN0w <- Link to video evidence of same fan being an a-hole.

Hmmm... Texas Tech fan who pushed Smart is apparently known for douchebaggery. Not saying this 

justifies pushing a fan but eventually the dude is asking for it. Once again, this will be blown out of 

proportion because black man pushes white man in Texas. Any person over the age of 22 who yells at a 

college athlete has problems. Period. That said, a punishment is obviously rightfully coming for Marcus 

Smart. There's a lot to dissect with this story and news outlets will have a field day with this all the way into 

March Madness. 

This man's super-fandom has crossed the line from obsessed to mentally disturbed.