NCAA March Madness Bracket Contest Recap: Who Wins An Awl?

David Cho
The Awl
Published in
3 min readApr 5, 2011

Last night, the UConn Huskies — which, by the way, have you ever taken a close look at their logo? the dog looks SO happy — won the men’s college basketball national championship with a win over Butler. You have probably already read, you intrepid sports fan you, that the title game was one of the worst ever, and if you watched it, you probably thought to yourself, “Wow, those look like taller versions of my friends and I playing basketball.” (That’s what I thought to myself.) But what probably hasn’t been articulated enough is how insufferable fans of UConn are.

Here’s the thing, I don’t even know that many UConn fans, but based on the few that I do know and my following of them in various social media channels, I feel like I’m bombarded by them and their over-the-top, “OMG WE DID IT, THE REST OF YOU ARE LOSERS”-ness about “their” winning of a national championship. Now, don’t get me wrong, I went to a college with a pretty good college basketball team, and reveling in their victories (and sulking through their defeats) is definitely something I do because of the affinity I have towards my alma mater, but these guys go too far. I’d just like a second to address these people.

Listen, guy UConn fan, you, person who’s years and years removed from graduating from college and had literally nothing to do with the team’s winning, why don’t you step back behind the line that separates the people who are just happy about their school winning from the people who act like they were an active participant and factor with the team’s success? You have no reason to talk shit right now. Be excited for sure! Victory is fun! But just so we’re completely clear, nothing you have ever done in your life has contributed to what happened in a college basketball game last night. No decision you’ve made in your life affected, or was even affected by, UConn’s most recent men’s college basketball national championship. When you were a 17 year-old kid trying to figure out what college to go to, were you like, “Oh, I feel good about this team’s chances of winning a college basketball championship in 2011 because of the NBA’s dilution of the college basketball talent pool?” No? I didn’t think so. So please stop bragging on Twitter about how unstoppable you are. There is nothing unstoppable about you — and the fact that you are acting like this in the public forum of the Internet undermines any previous respect that anyone had ever had for you. Now you’re making them feel bad for ever thinking highly of you in the first place. Nice job, jerk.

Anyways, more importantly, someone won an actual awl last night!

Andrew, the owner of “Bend Your Bracket,” come on down! It was actually a sort of a close matchup between this person and HBee’s “Hoopy” bracket. They both had the same total number of points after UConn won, but Andrew’s picking of a lower total score, although not nearly as low as the actual game, was the key to his victory. Andrew, email me at david at theawl dot com so that we can figure out how to get you the awl you have won!

There were also two staff members of The Awl who placed notably in the top 10, but because both of them came to me separately and annoyingly asking to be mentioned by name in this post, I’m choosing not to do it.

Until next year!

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David Cho
The Awl

I'm eating a drumstick and high at the same time, eating KFC on an airplane.