Two-Man Race for All the Marbles

I just checked out the BS Bracket challenge and was kind of astonished at what has transpired. We've got two guys/ladies that are in the driver's seat...If UM wins, one of them will win, if Louisville wins, the other shall win:

I'm almost positive that we've never had a champ that was in the 99.9th percentile...but this year we shall.  Not too far down the charts, I see a few names I know; congrats to you guys too! To be in the top 95% in America in guessing who's the champ skillfully predicting the outcome of the tournament is saying something. Thanks to everyone who entered.

I'm not sure why an MSU fan would enter our challenge...nor am I sure why an MSU fan would pull for UM to win it all...if UM wins, I'm sure we'll find out from Spartante86...if L'Ville wins, it'll be dkboilerfan writing the guest post. Either way, the stakes are palpably-high.

BS Bracket Time!!

Get excited..It's tourney time!!!

I've got whatever sickeness LBD had a few days ago- I can barely see out of my right eye because of all of the gunk in it, my nose is running, I'm coughing...AND my Boilers have been asked to play in the CBI; not an ideal morning in March.  All that said, I still love this time of year and am excited to to have my wife kick my ass fill out a bracket for the in the yearly BS bracket challenge.

If you're not, you're either a Communist or a Communist, because there is simply no higher achievement than winning this very bracket.  To create a bracket and enter, CLICK HERE!!

In case that link didn't work, or you're phobic of clicking things, the bracket name is "BS March Happy Fun Smile"...group #106391 in EsPN's Tournament Challenge page.

We usually get around 1,000,000* entries, so your odds of winning are better than the powerball...but the prizes are better than a Powerball winner** because our contest makes you rich AND famous***!!!

In all seriousness, the winner of our Bracket Challenge will win a few things; one might be a chance to post on this site...a prize that has more value than cash; you can't simply buy it**** plus you'll win a few other things in J's parents' basement.



*We've never had close to 1,000,000 entries
**Our prizes are no where near as valuable as winning the Powerball
*** "rich and famous" are based on the author's opinion of wealth and fame
****you actually could buy it; name a price...we're listening.

History Made In The Bracket Extravaganza

Well, you should all be really ashamed of yourselves. Not only did you lose the bracket extravaganza, you lost to a girl. A girl who has watched less college basketball than my 15-month-old. Yes, the winner of the BS Bracket Extravaganza is none other than my lovely wife.

Sure, when she filled out her bracket and had UConn winning it all, I scoffed at her. However, she wound up better than 97.2% of the six million brackets filled out on ESPN.com. So there's that.

For her skills, she wins a guest post on the site, an appearance on the Handsome Hour and to sleep with me. (Would have been really awkward if Boilerdowd's wife had won.)

We'll definitely let you know when to expect her brilliance to infiltrate the site.

The BS Bracket Challenge Extravaganza: Join Now

Can you believe it's that time again?

In just a matter of days, the seeds will be set, the brackets will be revealed, and Becky in accounting will win your office pool and piss you off.

But fret not. Because there's another group to play with and it's right here, the Boiled Sports Bracket Challenge Extravaganza. (Group 14992 if you need it.)

Join and play against us...and each other. For every entry that beats Boilerdowd, he has promised to do a lap around the Purdue campus carrying Tim on his shoulders.

And for the winner, you get some Boiled Sports swag, the option to do a post here at Boiled Sports and a guest appearance on our final podcast of the season in early April. And if that's not enough, you could also win $10,000.*

So join up, bizznatches. It's on.



*If you beat everyone in the entire Tourney Challenge, not just in the BS Challenge.

The BS Bracket Challenge Extravaganza Contains Some Drama

Usually by now, things in most bracket challenges are wrapped up. Not so here. The leaderboard could look very different tomorrow. And regardless of what happens, Jaun Moore run 4 Kramer, our current leader, who is currently in the 99.9 percentile, will not win.

If Duke wins tonight, current second place entry, jmpurdue5117 1, will take the prize. Not sure how you feel about "winning" if it means Duke is the national champion, but I'm sure they'll take it.

However, if Butler wins one more, entry Andrew Mizener 1 will jump from 57th place to champ. Andrew only had one Final Four team correct but he's also the only one in the 338 entries to take Butler to win it all. Not sure what percentile that will put him in, but I bet it'll be damn near the top.

Whichever of you wins the BS challenge, send us a note tonight or tomorrow morning at BoiledSports@gmail.com to discuss claiming your prize.

The BS Bracketologistic Experience

Nice work by our leader, P. Sadler, whose entry -- psad21 -- is in the 100th percentile of ESPN's nearly 5 million entries.

However, watch out for Keaton Grant is the man, as his entry has 7/8 Elite Eights remaining and all Final Fours, as well as BoilerPaulie, who has 8/8 and 4/4 remaining. Folks, we have entries in the hunt for the overall title, and that's pretty cool. It's also truly amazing, given how things went for the past four days.

Everybody Into The Pool!

Yes, that means you.

Join the Boiled Sports NCAA Tourney Extravaganza. First prize is $10,000*!

You also get a post on BS as well as a guest appearance on the Handsome Hour that follows the Final Four on April 7.

Lil Boilerdowd has just made his picks and it looks like Purdue will blow out MSU in the final. Get your tickets now.

*First place in the entire ESPN audience, that is.

The BS Bracket Challenge Extravaganza Returns

And this time, we hope not to bump into a maximum number of entrants as we did last year.

I've created a group on ESPN's Tournament Challenge page and you'll want to join the group emblazoned with "Boiled Sports," or group 3809.

So not only will the winner win valuable prizes (not really) if they win the BS challenge, they might also win $10,000 for winning the ESPN challenge. (Which, really, ESPN? Only ten grand? For something 3 or 4 million people enter? Weak.)

Yes, we'll remind you more about it, but you know you don't want to miss this. There's nothing more fun than proving how much more you know about college basketball than us. And the winner gets all sorts of trappings, including:

-- Free reign for their own guest post on Boiled Sports (now read by tens of people!)

-- Guest-spot on the Handsome Hour on April 7

-- A date with Boilerdowd's son (this may seem odd, but he meets all sorts of famous basketball players, so it's a worthwhile prize)

-- A night of passion with Tim

-- As-yet-undetermined prizes

2009 BS Challenge Weiners

The plaque for the alternates is in the ladies room.

Congrats go out to our winner of the 2009 BS Challenge Extravaganza of Picking College Basketball Games Correctly Good, Greg, whose entry -- DELA WHERE???? -- wound up with a record of 50 correct picks and 13 incorrect. Well-done, good sir. You have bested us. And 499 others in our pool. Just wait until next year when we find a resource other than Yahoo that, you know, can handle more than 500 entries. Yeah, sorry about that, everyone.

And what's Greg's prize? Well, I'm glad you asked. He gets the distinct honor (debatable, especially if you write something non-fawning about PSU) of posting his rambling incoherence on the BS airwaves. Sure, sure, we realize it's kind of haughty of us to think that getting to write here is some kind of a prize. But hey, you have access to more viewers than your Facebook page so there's always that.

Greg also gets a Boiled Sports t-shirt with one of our slogans on it. It's black with gold, in true Boilermaker fashion. Sure hope Greg actually likes the Boilermakers. For many reasons.

Tune in Friday morning to see what he has to say.

No, That's Goose With Two O's

Second place was a tight race, with both the jayhawks and Hail Leroy finishing in a dead heat on points. According to the tourney challenge rulebook, ties are broken by who is closest to the final score. And by that measure, the jayhawks pulls ahead and wins our second-place price, which is simply a t-shirt and far less fanfare.

Would the winners kindly email us at boiledsports@gmail.com so we can get your addresses for shipping (and stalking, if you're hot)?

Grassy-ass. And thanks for playing. You guys make this stuff so much fun.

BS Tourney Challenge -- Still Up For Grabs

It seems like weeks ago that we started the BS Tourney Challenge. Oh, yeah, it was. Since then, the Boilermakers have achieved about what we thought they might, the Big East was anointed the best conference ever by Digger Phelps, and Penn State won a national basketball championship.

And here we are, with just one more college basketball game to go this season. Remember, the winner of the BS Challenge gets a snazzy t-shirt (similar to picture) and the chance to voice themselves on our airwaves (Webwaves?), while second place only gets a t-shirt. Third place gets an ass-grab from Tim. And remember, coffee is for closers.

So where are we? Our leader in the clubhouse -- and winner if UNC wins the whole thing -- is DELA WHERE????, who accurately prognosticated MSU versus UNC in the final game. Nicely done.

Hail Leroy hangs on to second place and will continue to hang on with a UNC win.

But who can derail these two? The top 8 in the standings all have UNC winning and thus will all remain in lockstep if that happens. However, Digger's Stinky Palm and The Bracket have MSU winning it all and, thus, will finish 1-2 if that happens. Interestingly, only about six entries have Sparty winning it all. So either Purdue's blowout over them made people think they didn't have what it takes or everyone began believing the ESPN hype about the Big East.

If you wind up being the winner -- and really, the only two winners can be DELA WHERE???? or Digger's Stinky Palm -- please shoot us a note at boiledsports@gmail.com so we can correspond and get your guest-spot set up. Your brilliance will be required by early afternoon on Thursday and will be posted Friday morning so start thinking about what to say. It's kind of like the Oscars.

Good luck, all.

As The Dust Settles

Well, after those first two crack-like rounds of the NCAA tourney, it's time to take a look at the BS Challenge standings and as we wake up on Monday morning we see that we have a seven-way tie for first place.

Of those seven, nobody has less than 14 of the Sweet 16 correct (well done) and everybody has all of their Elite 8 and, obviously, Final Fours remaining (very well done). Robdawg39 has UNC getting bounced by Gonzaga next, so if that happens I think we may have a new leader in the clubhouse.

As for your fearless leaders, Boilerdowd is tied with Tim at 295th place, while I am leading our sorry BS effort at... 253rd place. However, Dowd still got 13 of 16 of the remaining teams right and Tim has 12. I have... uh.... 10. But we all have our Final Fours still, so there's that.

Oh, and hey, our condolences to the five of you who picked Wake to win it all. Tough break.

BS Tourney Challenge After Day 1

Well, now. 500 of you clowns join up and after day one, NONE of you are perfect. But we do have a 27-way tie for first place right now.

Just like last year, however, the wives of me and Boilerdowd are ahead of us. But not by much. And since my wife has Purdue playing Texas for the national title, well.... either she'll finish far behind OR, if that happens, she'll win us a lot of money, since I doubt that's in many brackets.

As I mentioned up above, my two favorite entry names are "Chief Pickingbrackets" and "May I e'twaun moore twinkie?" Out-standing work.

We have 23 entries that have Purdue as National Champions. We'll decide something special for all of you to win if the Boilermakers actually win the national title.

And we have somewhere around 35 entries with no champion selected. I know that I also forgot to plug in my champ until I saw my bracket status was "incomplete." This is obviously, for some reason, easy to overlook. Yahoo should probably figure out a solution. And on that subject, our apologies for using Yahoo. I was thinking about how much more I liked it than CBS or ESPN -- right up until I noticed it stopped taking entries at 500. That's effing stupid and, frankly, inexcusable. So our apologies on that. We'll have to go with ESPN next year -- I know for a fact you can have thousands in there. And by next year, Boiled Sports will probably be giving away a million dollars for our challenge winner. You know how it goes.

Back to the leaders. The trick, of course, at this point, is to not have lost any of your deep teams yet. If you get a few wrong in these first two days, so be it. But if none of your incorrects were teams you had going any further along, then you're golden. The other good news is that nobody's lost their national champs pick yet -- but that's always fun when it happens.

Everyone's bitching this morning that there were no surprises yesterday. Well, boo hoo. It was still awesome. And there were near surprises, which means the games were good.

As for today's games, I think it'll hold to form for the most part again. I have a weird feeling about Stephen F Austin against Syracuse (they seem due for a stinker) and I have a big feeling about North Dakota State over Kansas. No, I didn't pick these, so I don't get to take credit if they happen. But Kansas especially has a history of atrocious first-round bed-crapping. And NoDak State is on a huge high right now. And despite Kansas winning the Big 12 regular season, they are not the team that won the national title last season. They should still win big -- but I would be worried if I were a KU fan.

I did pick Wisconsin to upset FSU -- and will love to tell Digger to stick it up his caboose if it happens.

500 Entries!!

Thanks to all who have/are entering the BS Bracket Challenge...we just reached 500 entries. Last year, we had 90.

Thanks to everyone and they mamas.

Join the 200+ others!

We just reached 235 entries in the BS Tournament Challenge.

Come on, everyone else is doing it!!