Get Your Bracket Ready: Alternatives to NCAA March Madness

By Aimee Levitt Thu., Mar. 25 2010 at 2:03 PM

Does anybody else not give a shit about college basketball? And, despite that, does anybody else feel slightly left out of all the never-ending discussions of brackets?

Fortunately, all across the wondrous world of the Interwebz, there's a plethora of tournament brackets to rank things other than college basketball. Sure, none of the "winners" are determined by anything so straightforward as a ball game -- mostly they're based on public opinion -- but who cares? Everybody deserves something to root for.

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See? Here's a bracket everybody can get behind.

Let the games begin.

Over at Jezebel, cake versus pie has been a debate of long standing. This month, the editors have finally decided to take action. Thirty-two cakes and thirty-two pies will battle for supremacy, and then the two finalists will, presumably, settle the cake/pie question once and for all. Winners are determined by daily polls.

It's still early days, and some of the competitors have been controversial. (Can Boston cream pie be fairly classified as a pie when it's actually more of a cake? How can one fairly judge "Birthday cake" when, as a concept, it has no single, Platonic ideal?) There haven't been many surprises, either, aside from number 12 seed Boston cream pie's rout of number 5 peanut butter. Still, we're excited to see how this one turns out.

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Along similar lines, Tomato Nation this year has set up the N Candy AA tournament. Previously, they have tackled ice cream and breakfast cereal. The N Candy AA is two-fold: First, chocolate-based candy, followed by non-chocolate.