2013 Murphspot Mascot Bracket - Midwest - Round One, Part Two

#6 Memphis Tigers vs. #11 St. Mary's Gaels

There's a tendency to treat big cats like they're simply very large domestic cats, especially when they do things that cause them to superficially resemble housecats. It's a very dangerous tendency as big cats will kill you.

Come to think of it, housecats probably would too if they could. And, based on my experience with cats, it's entirely possible that tigers spend their nights running around their habitat as fast as they can knocking everything that's not well-secured down and waking up the neighbors.

Pictured: My cat and I anytime we're in the same room.

The point is, cats have murder and destruction in their souls.

The knight, as much of a knight as he is, has some manner of compressed air in his soul.

Seriously.

I realize the knight has weaponry and presumably had at least an elective in how to kill enormous wild animals, but a few hastily assembled readers and a sad "B" on an essay aren't going to do much to stop all of the tigers' very sharp parts from ripping through the mylar.

Memphis advances.

#3 Michigan State Spartans vs. #14 Valparaiso Crusaders

With these human-on-human matchups, it's tempting to just compare relative training, available arms and armor and the likelihood that any given mascot would actually want to start a fight. So, we have the Spartan vs. the Crusader.

For the moment, I'm going to overlook the  color scheme of the Crusader. I'm sure they've gotten enough flak for that.

The Spartan has undoubtedly been training for this for a longer period of time, but he's also got a pretty awful case of Giant Cartoon Mascot Head, which is a fairly large target, even if we accept that this tournament is taking place in the Who Killed Roger Rabbit universe. The Crusader has the sense to keep his visor down, so I'm thinking that his fighting style will be slightly more reserved and he'll be able to tire the Spartan out.

Valparaiso advances

#7 Creighton Bluejays vs. #10 Cincinnati Bearcats

It's the Fighting Binturongs vs. the Constant-Reminder-That-Ineffective-Coaching-Leads-to-Jose-Bautista-Being-Awesome-For-Not-the-Pirates. Hooray!

If Jose Bautista slightly adjusted his swing just a little bit further, there would be no sadness in the world.

I'm a little disappointed every year that Cincinnati's team isn't just called the Binturongs, but if you actually look at a picture of one, I can see how someone would see it in a tree and decide it's called a bearcat. Binturongs aren't all that objectively terrifying, but they've lucked out somewhat in matching up in the first round with a songbird.

This one comes in peace.

I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm anti-songbird this time around. They're nice and all, and I certainly don't condone underground songbird fighting, but they just don't strike me as something that would be good at eviscerating its opponent.

The Bearcat, on the otherhand, has this statue.

This one pretty emphatically does not come in peace.

If I were walking through a sylvan glen and that swung down at me, I'd fall down, then cry, then probably be eaten.

Cincinnati advances.

#2 Duke Blue Devils vs. #15 Albany Great Danes

I've spent the past six years trying to figure out if the Blue Devils are a French alpine military unit or some flowers or the entity that met Robert Johnson at the crossroads at midnight.

See? A BLUES devil. Because, see, there's a myth about Robert Johnson involving him trading his soul to the Devil at a crossroads at midnight in order to be awesome at guitar and please laugh at this. I'm very tired. Oh dear.

Moving on, this is the first time I think I've had to deal with the Great Danes, which is a shame because Niels Bohr and Scooby Doo are both pretty awesome.

The Mascot himself is pretty much what you'd expect; he's a large brown dog wearing appropriate footwear and a jersey, but I am a fan of the idea that he's been given a simple collar with a stylized A nametag instead of the overplayed studded leather Hot Topic nonsense. Hopefully, he's been chipped as well, so he'll be able to make his way back to Albany in the event that he gets lost.

Because I'm weary of having to figure out what the Blue Devil is and because Damien the Great Dane seems to have his wits about him, I'm going to say that preparedness is the key to this matchup.

Albany advances.

2013 Murphspot Mascot Bracket - Midwest - Round One, Part One

#1 Louisville Cardinals vs. #16 Liberty Flames

I went back and forth on this more than is warranted by a goofy mascot tournament. On one hand, if this is a straight-up bird battle, Liberty seems to have the edge; they've got a bird-of-prey as their mascot, whereas Louisville has a seed-eating songbird whose defining characteristic is not being able to hide well unless it's autumn or it has selected the CNA Center as the field of battle.Rams 

On the other hand, it bugs me when teams have a nickname that doesn't at all correspond to their mascot. I'm sort of fine with it when the name is something abstract, but if the UIC Flames can have a dragon who is also named Sparky, I feel Liberty could have put some more effort into this. 

Sparky D. Dragon is not relevant to this bracket, as UIC isn't in the tournament, but he's a dragon wearing sneakers. He stays.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Bird has some manner of mutation wherein he's been granted teeth and a frightening musculature and if you're ever in a car wreck caused by low blood sugar, he will pull you from the wreckage and comfort you. Actually, that alone is enough to sway it, at least for this round.

Louisville advances.

#8 Colorado State Rams vs #9 Missouri Tigers

Listen, I don't want to impugn the reputation of the noble bighorn sheep. I'm sure they're wonderful creatures who I wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley.

Mostly because I would start to have to question what life choices I'd made that had sent me down an alley with livestock. But maybe there's some sort of farm show I'm near and I'm within minutes of getting some fried cheese curds. That'd be fine.

I might stop the mascot bracket prematurely to just go sit at the Wisconsin State Fair grounds and wait.

In any case, the fact of the matter is that however effective CAM the Ram would be at fighting other rams, Mizzou's got a tiger. A tiger will kill a ram, eventually, regardless of the surrounding circumstances.

Missouri advances.

#5 Oklahoma State Cowboys vs. #12 Oregon Ducks

Ducks are fun. A duck once flew at my head, and it was startling. Frightening, though? I'm not sure I'd be able to get behind the idea that ducks are frightening.

Particularly not if the duck is wearing a jaunty beanie.

To be fair, if this were a matchup between the Duck and the Houston Cougars, I'd have actual precedent to run with as that has already happened.

But it's not. This is a battle between the Duck and the empty-eyed, shellac-faced Pistol Pete, whose hat appears to be a melted traffic cone.

I don't think they let you call yourself a cowboy if you can't successfully fight a duck. I'm pretty sure whatever cowboy credentials the Federal Cowboy Agency grants you are revoked.

Oklahoma State advances.

#4 St. Louis Billikens vs. #13 New Mexico State Aggies

Damn it, Billiken, I had just recovered.

I get it. Sort of. The Billiken is based on a doll designed by a Missouri art teacher in the early 1900s and it's supposed to be a good luck totem and may or may not have resembled a football coach at SLU. So that's one thing.

Of course, its foam-rubber mascot form is full of life and happiness and is some sort of vampire bat thing which is in your closet right now (that last bit is best read if you've turned off all of the lights and are reading this alone while a squeaky windvane is just outside your window.)

The Aggies nickname is pretty indistinguishable from the other aggies, but the mascot's got a Mustache of Justice and a Righteoulsly-Oversized-Belt-Buckle of Fury.

I'm going to hope that whatever precious metal you need to stop a Billiken is castable into something that'll fire from those revolvers because someone stop it it's coming for me please send help.

New Mexico State advances.

2013 Murphspot Mascot Bracket - Play In Round

#16 North Carolina A&T Aggies vs. #16 Liberty Flames

I'm not sure what the bulldog is doing here. I'm assuming the intended imagery is that he's leaping at you, but I don't know how many bulldogs attack by lunging with their front paws. It's possible the back half of the image involves the remains of Durin's Bridge and an either winged or wingless Balrog depending on which side of that argument you come down on falling to the depths below while the Noble Bulldog tells Frodo et al. run to elsewhere in Greensboro. The Liberty Flames on the other hand, have a nickname that sounds like what William Tecumseh Sherman would have called his particular brand of burning everything in sight down if he'd been trying to be message-conscious. Their mascot is an eagle named Sparky, which is precious. Based on the most recent reboots of Oregon Trail, I'm thinking an eagle could probably carry away a dog. Even if that dog has a spiked collar. 

Liberty University advances. And that's a sentence I'd never thought I'd type.

#11 Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders vs. #11 St. Mary's Gaels

As discussed previously, the Saint Mary's Gaels mascot is an apparently inflatable knight named Gael Force One. I'm going to assume this is some sort of commentary on the helium crisis. 

Gael Force One is non-renewable and could be lost to us forever if he escapes the atmosphere.

For the purposes of the bracket, I'll assume that his Mylar balloon qualities are a red herring and that he is, in fact, some manner of knight. He's going up against an improbably blue horse named Lightning. That seems tame enough, but their original mascot was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Having your mascot be the founder of the Klan finally was realized to be a bad idea in the 70's, and they eventually settled on Forrest's horse as a replacement. Even extricating all of the politics, I'm going to have to say a knight could take down a horse if only because if horses could organize and kill knights, they'd have done that by now.

St. Mary's advances.

#16 LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds vs. #16 James Madison Dukes

Ok. So, I'm starting to get bulldogs as a mascot; they're presumably tenacious and angry and have fun jowls that work well in the cartoony style of mascot drawing. And I get that studded collars are a thing that's usually going to accompany the cartoon bulldog mascot. But what is going on here? I'll give Duke Dog the benefit of the doubt and assume that's the appropriate attire for him in the Duchy of Harrisonburg, Virginia, but it's still going to throw me off. 

The blackbird has the Beatles (well, Paul, anyway) and apparently was sacred in Classical Greek folklore, but they're also at risk of being baked in a pie and their main predator is the domestic cat, which doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. I've got a cat. I've seen the cat hunt and kill feathered cat dancers and it's pretty ferocious, but if the blackbird can't stand up to that, it's got no chance against nobility. 

James Madison advances.

#13 Boise State Broncos vs. #13 La Salle Explorers

So there's that. 

On the other hand, we've got a battle between another blue horse and a man with a feather in his hat, a Van Dyke and a telescope. At the very least, the Explorer is going to have some advanced warning of the oncoming Bronco. Presumably he's got some surveying gear which is probably pretty pointy. Buster Bronco, on the other hand, has disturbingly human eyes.

No, it's fine. I was done with REM-sleep for the rest of my life anyway.

Broncos are feral horses, and just so that I can stop looking deep into the soul of Buster there, I'm going to assume that somewhere in the training to explore there's some manner of training on "how to tame a horse." I mean, hell, it took five or so minutes in Red Dead Redemption, and that's pretty much reality, right? Right.

La Salle advances.

2013 Murphspot Mascot Bracket - The Rules

It's Mid-March again. The snow has melted in Chicago until at least later tonight, the sun is setting at a reasonable hour and it's time once again to determine who would win the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament if the world were rational and this nonsense were decided by which mascot could win in a fight to the death.

Every time I do this, I tend to lose the thread and wind up with pages and pages on the first few rounds and a few sad, struggling paragraphs at the end of the tournament before crowning whoever either has a gun or is a dragon. So, this time around, some actual rules.

I. Self-Enforced Guideline for Entries:  I'm going to try to keep each match-up at around 150-200 words; hopefully that'll lead to a slightly more consistent feel overall.

II. Higher Seed Selects Field of Battle: The fact that we're (in terms of mascots, not actual basketball ability) just throwing teams together here can lead to a number of problems. If a dugong is fighting a springbok, where is that happening? The springbok'll drown in the dugong's natural habitat and the dugong will do whatever a dugong would do if you put it in central Namibia. Probably it would not go well. So, rather than just picking at random, I'll assume that the battlefield is in the habitat of the higher-seeded mascot. I'm also not sure anyone has ever used the contraction "springbok'll" in the context college basketball.

III. Similarly Named Teams to be Decided on Fierceness of Mascot, or, Failing That, Team Logo: There was probaby a way to come up with a name for this rule that didn't involve just making a terrible newspaper headline out of it, but this is madness so I won't bother.

IV. Earlier Matches May Be Precedent-Setting: It's difficult to say whether a Banded Mongoose taking down a Golden Mole in the first round should mean that it'll do the same to another mole encountered in the Elite Eight. Fatigue seems like it should play a factor, but for the most part, I'm going to let the Mongoose/Mole precedent stand. This will be the first to be discarded when I get sick of it.

So we'll see how that works. Next up: 2013 Murphspot Mascot Bracket - First Four. I'll be editing this post as we go to include links to the matchups as they happen.

Round One
First Four
Midwest - Round One - Part One
Midwest - Round One - Part Two
West - Round One - Part One
West - Round One - Part Two
South - Round One - Part One
South - Round One - Part Two
East - Round One - Parts One and Two

Round Two
Midwest
West
South
East

Sweet Sixteen
Midwest/West
South/East

Elite Eight

Final Four and Championship

Black Sword Brewery

It's somehow never been something I've written about on here (or really anywhere else), but I've been brewing beer for about a year and a half at this point, along with Jason (proprietor of Spark'i'th'dark) and Beau (who doesn't have a blog that I'm aware of). We've had some successes, (particularly a sort of Belgian dubbel thing with strong cherry overtones that we call The Bastard Prince and a wheat beer we're calling Easy Win after our first batch turned out terribly) and some failures (the initial batch, which I won't discuss here because it makes me sad). Most of the fun to this point has been in the experimentation and recipe building; a lot of the beers we make are difficult to categorize according to Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) style guidelines, mostly because of the adjuncts we've been using. It turns out that if you're going for a certain style of beer, you can't just dump a bag of cherries in during secondary fermentation and expect that they'll go for that. It does, however, make everything delicious and occasionally higher in alcohol.

In any case, after a trip to a restaurant convention with the primary goal of "try all of the cheese samples" that I might write more about at some point, we've been in contact with a few people with actual, for real breweries and a few distributors who expressed interest in getting our beer into kegs and, from there, into pubs around the city. Which would be unreal. Since then, we've applied for and received our tax paperwork and are in the process of building a facility (well, a rig in Beau's girlfriend's garage that'll allow us to brew enough to make this feasible) and filing the actual paperwork to officially become a limited liability corporation. We've got a logo, a shortlist of the beers we're looking to produce commercially (The Bastard Prince and Easy Win among them) and while at the moment we're taking a longview approach because none of us have the thousands laying around to just start this nonsense, it's possible that by early next year, we'll be sort of brewing professionally.

So that's fun. Incidentally, if you have thousands of dollars laying around and want to invest in us, let me know. We would like that.

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket: Final Four and Championship

#10 Xavier Musketeers vs. #10 Virginia Cavaliers

Oh damn,  you guys. Not only do we finally have two human mascots going up against one another, and not only are they both at least presumed to have some sort of elite military training, but they both represent very specific factions serving close to their king at the same point in history. Roughly!

The Musketeers of the Guard (Mousquetaires de la garde!) were formed under Louis XIII in 1622 and spent most of their time protecting nobles, shooting things (nominally in the name of protecting nobles, but I’m sure that there was a 17^th century French equivalent of canned goods on a fence at some point) and waiting around for Alexandre Dumas to be born so that their story could eventually be romanticized, and then summarized by Wishbone.

Caution: If you actually ask Wishbone “What’s the story?”, he will cut you.

The Cavaliers, on the other hand were the loyalist component of the English Civil War, starting in 1642 and hung around through Oliver Cromwell’s rule and the Restoration of the Monarchy. They both had their own military problems to be concerned with (the Musketeers with trying to make sure the Huguenots didn’t kill the king; the Cavaliers fighting a civil war), so it’s difficult to say how they’d have done actually fighting each other. The Musketeers lose on numbers, but win on fancy hats and keeping kings alive (Louis XIII died of tuberculosis, and Louis XIV was a king for longer than anyone’s ever been a king in Europe). The Cavaliers had that period where the kings they supported were executed, but did mount a come-from-behind victory in that the Monarchy did show back up again.

I’d say this comes down to overwhelming force against a smaller, though better trained opponent, but honestly I keep reading “Musketeer” as “Mouseketeer” and I’m not going to make it to the end of this post if that keeps happening. So overwhelming force takes it.

Virginia advances.

#13 Montana grizzlies vs. #15 Detroit Titans

The Grizzlies have gotten here mostly by virtue of being 700 pounds and having razor sharp claws and murder in their hearts, along with a little help from the fact that Monte the Grizzly in particular rides a motorcycle and wears a bandana and is probably eventually going to be the subject of a critically well-received drama on FX. There’s a problem that comes up when your main advantage is size, though, and that’s when your opponent is something that serves as the base of synonyms for “really, really big”. 

 Oh dear.

The grizzlies have the advantage over most mortal things that aren’t several hundred pounds, but the Titans don’t exactly go down easily. Hell, it apparently takes a whole new set of gods to come in, which only really serves to imprison the Titans, and even then, you’ve got myths wherein Zeus overthrows Cronus by getting him drunk and putting him in a cave.

There’s simply no way a grizzly bear is walking out of that alive.

Detroit advances.

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket Championship

#10 Virginia Cavaliers vs. #15 Detroit Titans

 So we've established that the Titans are somewhere between a ridiculous man with a ridiculous smile in ridiculous armor and powerful (though explicitly not omnipotent) deities. The Cavaliers had, well, horses. And swords. And their own creepy smile. And a reputation for drinking and carousing and having plumed hats, which I sympathize with. Basically all they've got on the Titans is that the Cavaliers existed, whereas the Titans didn't, except as a moon of Saturn (or moons, if we're counting things named after individual Titans as part of that set).

Even there, we're conflicted. Titan's got an atmosphere, but it's got sort of a yellow haze to it. There are oceans, but they're made of methane. There might be microbial life, but that's not terribly threatening unless we're going to give the Cavalier some sort of terrible infection. 

And while, as I mentioned, the Titans are powerful, they also have a history of failing pretty hard. I'm not sure whether the Cavaliers have Zeus' contact information, or if they've got the ability to summon an iceberg, but it's not as though the Titans are unstoppable. It's merely really hard.

What it really comes down to is the interaction between a guy with a horse, a sword, and a rifle and a Titan with a tendency to be overthrown. I'm not finding a lot about human-Titan interactions in myth, and the Titan that keeps popping up is Prometheus, who would probably have just handed the victory to the Cavalier and then gotten tortured for it. 

 Honestly, I think that's it. I'm going to say that Tommy Titan is merciful toward CavMan and allows him the victory, based solely on his humanity and his facial hair. Tommy Titan will be OK. Clint Eastwood will make a commercial for him.

This may have been unduly influenced by hat plumage.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Champion

 

The Virginia Cavaliers.

 

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket, Elite Eight

#5 Wichita Shockers vs. #10 Xavier Musketeers


I've already briefly lost my mind and decided that the Animated Wheat Abominations embodied by WuShock shouldn't be affected by gunfire, as projectiles would probably pass through them pretty easily. On the other hand, it's not as though wheat's got a lot of offensive capabilities. If wheat is going to kill a musketeer, it's going to have to either be incorporated into some sort of poisonous dish (preferably of the period most closely associated with the musketeers so that he'll eat it without suspicion) or by not being there for long enough that the Musketeer starves to death.

D'artagnan, on the other hand, was mostly concerned with actual combat but did, I'm guessing, have some sort of blade which could conceivably cut through wheat.

Xavier advances.


#1 Michigan State Spartans vs. #10 Virginia Cavaliers


This is turning out to be surprisingly human heavy near the end of the bracket. It makes sense from a "we have all the weapons, and occasionally the opponent is wheat, as though this is like the inverse of an after school nutrition special" point of view, but I'm worried this is merely highlighting some sort of underlying specieism I've been trying to think I've dealt with. It's probably more the weapons thing, though.

I could get into the differences in weaponry between 4th century BC Peleponnesians and 17th century frenchmen, but it's really more relevant to my interests to note that the Virginia Cavalier mascot (the unimaginatively named CavMan) has one of the few goatees in the tournament, and it's terrifying.

Cavman's only form of communication is maniacal laughter.

The Spartan mascot (Sparty) is more muscular, but lacks facial hair entirely. Also firearms.

Virginia advances.


#13 Montana Grizzlies vs. #3 Florida State Seminoles


There's another geographical disconnect here; grizzly bears tend to hang out in the northwest, and the Florida State Seminoles are pretty solidly centered in Florida. And the Seminoles have a fighting chance, as they've got weapons and have probably taken down a bear or two in their time. That'd be great if we were dealing with a standard bear, but we've previously established that Monte (following in the tradition of giving incredibly plain names to mascots) has both a motorcycle and a bandana.

Which, as we all know, universally signifies badassery.

I can't think of much that would stand up against a 700 pound grizzly bear flying around on a motorcycle, but I'm now going to live the rest of my life terrified that that is a thing that will happen.

Montana advances.


#1 North Carolina Tar Heels vs. #15 Detroit Titans


Rameses is great, and all, but when you get right down to it, he's an oversized ram with oddly yellow horns.

I'm concerned they might be indicative of some kind of health issue.

The "Tar Heel" thing seems to literally come from tar and pitch that were produced in North Carolina. There's a "standing their ground" implication that goes along with that, but honestly, I think speed and agility is going to be significantly more important, especially when going up against a deity. The Titans, as ever, have an uncomfortably wide smile and Bruce Campbell's chin.

Detroit advances.

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket, Sweet Sixteen, Round Two

#8 Kansas State Wildcats vs. #13 Montana Grizzlies

Even if we go with the most vicious possible definition of “wildcat”, it’s a bit of a stretch to think it’s going to be able to withstand an assault from a Grizzly Bear. Particularly when it’s a grizzly bear who’s apparently the Fonz.

This is a bear riding a motorcycle while wearing a bandana. WELCOME TO MONTANA.

The wildcat might be quick, but it doesn’t appear to have a motorcycle, which is a problem in this bracket. It also doesn’t have anything to do with the Who’s More Grizzled, and therefore is going to lose.

 

And now Garth Brooks has shown up on my blog. 

Montana advances.

#3 Florida State Seminoles vs. #10 West Virginia Mountaineers.

It’s the Happy-Go-Lucky Politically Complicated Incredibly Uncomfortable matchup!

Presumably the Seminoles never had much to do with the Mountaineers of West Virginia, so there’s no real historical precedent we can look to; presumably the Mountaineers would have the advantage in the mountains, while the Seminoles would take it if the climate’s actually enjoyable.

Interestingly, both the Mountaineer and Chief Osceola are portrayed as actual people in costume rather than terrifying foam rubber monstrosities. Osceola, incidentally, was a historical Seminole leader who responded to being locked up in Fort King by starting the Second Seminole War. If you’ve actually started a war in Florida, you get a bid to the Murphspot Mascot Elite Eight.  

Florida State advances

#1 North Carolina Tar Heels vs. #12 California Golden Bears

This is tough. On one hand, we’ve either got a giant anthropomorphic ram or general North Carolinians (or North Carolinian Generals, like Hugh Shelton) versus a legendary bear that wound up on a flag. Somehow, throughout this, I’d been thinking of the California Golden Bear in the abstract as a several hundred pound killing machine.

Cal’s got a mascot, though, and his name is Oski.

He’s a red hat and UK passport away from being Paddington Bear. 

Really? This is what’s gotten to the Sweet Sixteen under my watch? He’s got happy eyes. He’s wearing a cardigan. He doesn’t give of so much a ferocious vibe as he does a Delightful Resident of the Neighborhood of Make Believe. He and Bob Dog probably play backgammon on the weekends. But this is a fight to the death, and there’s no room for ridiculous smiles.  

North Carolina advances.  

#6 San Diego State Aztecs vs. #15 Detroit Titans.

It probably says something deeply disturbing about me that when I hear the word “Aztec”, my mind goes to the ancient Central Mexican civilization only after stopping by one of the more ridiculous superhero movies ever to appear on Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Pumaman.

To be fair, Vadinho was a great belt salesman. 

 
I don’t know than I can hold that against the Aztecs, who had nothing to do with it (though it should be noted that the star of the movie was in one movie after that, and has since become a medical malpractice lawyer in New York, which I'll attribute to some sort of Wrath of Quetzalcoatl). And again, we’re at a point where we’ve got a culture from the 14th century going up against a bunch of deities. I don’t see this working out well for the Aztecs or Donald Pleasance.  

Detroit advances.

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket, Sweet Sixteen, Part One

#16 Western Kentucky Hilltoppers vs. #5 Wichita State Shockers

We’ve already established that Big Red is the personification of Joy, and in a battle to the death, he’s probably got control of the high ground by virtue of his name. If we go with the position that the Prequels exist and weren’t some fever dream we all experienced in the early 00s, Obi-Wan would have us believe this is a crucial determining factor.

Big Red does not stand for versions that insert Hayden Christensen into Return of the Jedi. Blasphemy.

On the other hand, though, Big Red is reasonable and understands the importance of agriculture to the nation’s food supply, and would want to resolve this peacefully. Also, I can’t think of how to make a muppet and a living bundle of wheat fight each other. And so, for the peace of the nation and the good of the bracket, and for the first time in Murphspot Mascot Bracket history, Big Red stands down to allow WuShock a chance at the championship.


Wichita State advances.


#3 Baylor Bears vs. #10 Xavier Musketeers

I have no idea how to deal with a bear in the wild. I presume I’d scream and then die. But if you had to, and I strongly advise against doing anything that could put you in a situation where that’s a possibility, I’d imagine a long-range weapon like a musket would probably come in handy. Of course, if we’re sticking to period weaponry, the Musketeer’s probably got a smooth bore weapon, so they’re not terribly accurate. And, of course, they’re not terribly quick to reload.

Xavier Nady's got nothing to do with this, but hey! It's Xavier Nady! Who is evidently Xavier Nady VI. Xavier could have had a team on the court composed entirely of Xavier Nadys who preceded this one.

So D’Artagnan’s basically got one shot at taking the bear down before it rips his damn head off. But this is someone who’s trained at this for years, and I’ve got to assume that “protecting the King” included “from bear attacks”, as rare as that might be in Paris.


Xavier advances


#1 Michigan State Spartans vs. #5 New Mexico Lobos

The Spartans, I think, are probably primarily focused on military action against other nations and city-states, and perhaps not so practiced at wild packs of animals. So that might give the Lobos a fighting chance here. Wolves, particularly, seem like they’d tear through you if they got the chance.

 

And, apropos of nothing, here’s something from …And Out Come the Wolves. Because I can.

On the other hand, the Lobos are basically large, ferocious dogs, and if you can’t work up a defense against that with a sword and shield, you’re probably not going to do well in battle. Add spears to the equation and the Spartans have a reach advantage. I wanted to find a way to give this to New Mexico, mostly so that I could justify the Rancid video, but I don’t see how they come out on top here.


Michigan State advances.


#14 Iona Gaels vs. #10 Virginia Cavaliers

I’ve been giving Killian a lot of credit for his serial-killer smile, but in all likelihood that’s just healthy dentistry. I don’t know that he’s swallowing his vanquished foes whole. Probably, but it’s not certain.

Once again, AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH.

In any case he’s not specified to be part of any formal military unit, while the Cavaliers were. I suspected this would be a somewhat political conflict, but if we take the Cavaliers to be Royalist supporters of Charles I, it turns out that they’d have wound up loosely allied with the Gaelic Irish following the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Still, I’m going to have to go with the actual military unit here.


Virginia advances.

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket, Midwest, Round Two

#1 North Carolina Tar Heels vs. #9 Alabama Crimson Tide

 The problem with being an abstract mascot is that you’re going to have some difficulty defining yourself enough to be useful in a mascot bracket. Sure, the Crimson Tide have Al the Elephant, but focusing on the “Tide” part of “Crimson Tide”, we’ve got a mascot where you’ll be able to just wait for six hours and it’ll go away on its own. I even checked the Crimson Tide IMDB page to try to find a justification here. On one hand, the sub was the USS Alabama, hence the name, but a quick (by which I mean needlessly extensive and far too much work for a joke) check of the cast shows no one who’s actually a North Carolina native who could act as a source for intel in the all important mascot battle.

Things I’d forgotten: James Gandolfini was in this. 

As far as whether North Carolinians are going to be able to hold off a tide; they’ve got lighthouses. I’ve seen them. They’re tall and occasionally no longer used but demonstrate that, if nothing else, they’ll be able to tell when the tide is doing things; mostly so they can ignore it and go back to working on the Andy Griffith Colossus.  

North Carolina advances.  

#12 California Golden Bears vs. #4 Michigan Wolverines

I get the ferocity, the tendency to bring down larger animals, and the 1860s era Adamantium-fused Canadians with a healing factor. I get all that. But what it comes down to is that even if the Wolverines are the largest member of the weasel family, they’re still a member of the weasel family.

Indisputable fact: The best alternate name for wolverines: “Quickhatch”. Also a pretty great name for a jam band, or an affiliate of the A-Team.

The Golden Bear, according to mythology, is a 1,500 pound bear. That’s a small car. Or a huge pumpkin from Maryland.

I’m going to assume that even if the wolverine can kill animals larger than itself, there’s a limit.  

California advances  

#6 San Diego State Aztecs vs. #14 Belmont Bruins

This is always the case, isn’t it? A few years ago we wound up very Tiger-heavy, and this year it’s getting to be a bit much with the bears. Brown bears, in this instance, who as far as I can tell mostly hang out in Western Canada and Alaska on this continent, which doesn’t really overlap with the area of Central Mexico historically controlled by the Aztec Empire. I’m not sure who this benefits.

On one hand, I guess you could say the Aztecs would never have fought a brown bear specifically (though I think the strategy for fighting one type of bear transfers across bear breeds). On the other hand, I’m pretty sure a brown bear would stand there dumbfounded, trying to figure out what an atlatl is until such time as it’s got a spear in the face.

Turns out you can hunt deer with these in Alabama. I don’t know whether that will be relevant for anyone reading this, but I figured I’d include it on the off chance that it was. If I have atlatl wielding readers, that's either awesome or frightening. 

San Diego State advances.  

#10 Purdue Boilermakers vs. #15 Detroit Titans

Good on Purdue for diversifying. They’ve got, as a mascot, a train, the guy who makes trains, a shot and a beer, and a jazz band that I used to go see at the Wightman Building in Squirrel Hill.

Purdue Pete seems perennially surprised. 

At least a few of those appeal to me specifically, which is a good way to get bumped up in the mascot bracket. The problem with making your mascot a train is that it’s prone to breakdowns and derailments, and of course if you actually want to have a chance at hurting another mascot, you’ve got to hope it wanders across your path. Titans, being deities, can probably handle knocking the train the hell over, rendering it harmless. As long as the train isn’t named Zeus.  

Detroit advances.

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket, East, Round Two

#16 UNC Asheville Bulldogs vs. #8 Kansas State Wildcats

Ah, the most adorable of Mascot Battles. Bulldogs are, I guess, occasionally more ferocious than some other breeds, but they seem very compact, which will probably affect their ability to compete in a battle against anything that has any sort of reach whatsoever.

On the other hand, they seemed to occasionally piss Frasier off, so they’ve got that going for them. 

The wildcats aren’t a Cheers spinoff, though, and can charitably be interpreted to be an actual large cat with prey and claws and stealth and things. It could be a serval!

I assume the tiny head helps with land speed? I guess? 

In any case, I can’t really make a case for the bulldog pulling this out.  

Kansas State advances.  

#5 Vanderbilt Commodores vs. #13 Montana Grizzlies

The Commodores, sure, have military training, but Montana’s landlocked, which negates any ship-based artillery. Moreover, Commodores aren’t going to have the full strength of the men they’d theoretically command; this is one on one. And I’m trying to be gentle here, but the Commodore isn’t the youngest mascot. He’s been around, and apparently has some sort of spinal disorder.

I’m not looking forward to the point in the aging process where my skin gathers around my wrists. 

The Grizzlies are 700 pound monsters, and even though the Commodore probably has a sidearm and a (potentially ceremonial) sword, I’m going to give this to the Grizzlies on the grounds that they’d swat the Commodore’s head the rest of the way off while he’s trying to load his traditional musket.  

Montana advances.  

#11 Texas Longhorns vs. #3 Florida State Seminoles

 Listen, cows are great. I like cows. They’re stalwart, and it’s probably tough to fistfight one, if only because I think punching a cow is probably pretty ineffective.

What do you want? Moo. Are we good now? Great.

On the other hand, part of why I enjoy cows as much as I do is that they’re delicious, which certainly doesn’t bode well for them in a fight to the death. The Seminoles, in addition to being one of the few symbols sanctioned by the tribe for which they’re named, are on horseback and have a variety of weapons, most prominently a giant spear. So on one hand, we’ve got livestock, and on the other, a tribe that kept livestock.

Florida State advances.  

#10 West Virginia Mountaineers vs. #2 Ohio State Buckeyes

West Virginia’s basically gone with Grizzly Adams as a mascot.

Never trust a man wearing that much fringe. Or a raccoon.

Meanwhile, and I don’t say this to denigrate Ohio State, but they’re a slightly poisonous nut. Sure, an anthropomorphic nut named Brutus, but an anthropomorphic nut nonetheless. I don’t know much about Mountaineering (hell, I can barely keep myself alive in modern civilization, surrounded by things designed to make sure I don’t accidentally wander into life threatening situations), but I’m pretty sure that early on in Mountaineering 101 is “Don’t eat the poison”.  

West Virginia advances.

Fifth Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket, South, Round Two

#1 Michigan State Spartans vs. #9 Saint Louis Billikens

 As much as this is meant to be about mascots tearing each other limb from limb, and as much as I enjoy awarding a mascot for having apparently been designed for that purpose (as with the Jayhawk having shoes to kick his opponents), I've got to say I'm pretty impressed by Saint Louis' ability to disregard that entirely and go with a toy fad from the 1900s.

On the other hand, I could see this thing following you around until you're insane.

You could probably come up with some convoluted way in which the Luck of the Billiken is somehow going to overcome the guys with swords and spears and a deathwish, but for some reason I imagine the luck in question being more of the "Got a great parking spot" variety than the "comes out victorious despite being unarmed and a toy" variety. I could be wrong. I'd like to be wrong, but I don't think I am.  

Michigan State advances  

#5 New Mexico Lobos vs. #4 Louisville Cardinals

I know. They're wolves. But it strikes me as much more amusing if we're going to see this as a matchup between an anthropomorphic seed-eating bird with anger issues (possibly related to the fact that it only eats seeds) and the band Los Lobos.

Evidently, the son of the lead singer is the drummer for Social Distortion, and in the Murphspot Mascot Bracket, you get an advantage for being able to contact Mike Ness quickly. They're going up against a bird whose primary characteristics are "bright red" and "isn't known for attacking anything." I don't even think we'd need to invoke the wolves. I think you could probably take that down with a spirited rendition of "La Bamba".

New Mexico advances  

#6 Murray State Racers vs. #14 Iona Gaels

Murray State's pretty impressive in terms of having a mascot that gets people to cheer for a sport by competing in a different sport. If this were a bracket in which we were determining which mascot was most capable of running one and a quarter miles, Racer One would probably have a much better shot. The sad truth is that I don’t really know that racing horses are known for their fighting capability. The Gaels probably were, and Killian the Gael in particular just has a lot of teeth. That’s not really a smile that suggests determined yet sportsmanlike competition.

It’s more on the “YOU’LL NEVER FIND THE BODIES” end of the spectrum.

And the Racer is probably acclimated to humans, and if he’s too trusting, this is going to end badly for him.  

Iona advances  

#10 Virginia Cavaliers vs. #15 Norfolk State Spartans

The thing with Spartans is that they peaked a while ago, when all they had to worry about were the Athenians, but wound up being overtaken by the Romans when the Romans decided they wanted to overtake everything.

The Cavaliers, on the other hand, specifically hung around Charles II and definitely had swords, but probably also had some firearms and were typified by Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who seems pretty accomplished.

On the other hand, his name is Rupert, which calls to mind Rupert Murdoch, Rupert Everett and, oddly, the Ruprecht scene from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.



So while the Spartans might have the upper hand in close-quarters combat, the Cavaliers have better range weapons and will do well here.

 Virginia advances