Uncle Crappy

The selection committee has spoken, which means its time for the Seventh Annual Uncle Crappy NCAA Final Four Challenge (Brought to you by Bocktown).

Given that this our seventh year, there is a mess of you who already know the AUCNFFC drill; for those of you who don’t here’s how it works in handy bullet list form:

• Find yourself a copy of the bracket. If you can’t manage that, you probably shouldn’t be operating a computer, driving a car, breathing, etc., but if you’re having trouble, there’s a nice PDF version provided by our friends at Yahoo! Sports here. Fill it out.
• After consulting your bracket, pick the four teams — one from each region — that you think will win the regional championships and travel to the Final Four in New Orleans.
• After consulting your bracket again, pick the two teams you think will win the national semi-final games on March 31.
• Consult your bracket once more, and pick the team from your semi-finalists who will win the title game April 2.
• How do I figure out who wins? You get two points for picking a correct Final Four team, four points for a correct semi-finalist and six points for a  correct national  championship pick. Assuming I can add correctly (and that can be quite an assumption, boys and girls), the entry with the highest point total is our winner.
• Yes, there is a tie-breaker. When you submit your pick, please also include your project score for the championship game. If it’s necessary, the entry whose score is closest will be our winner.

Still confused? Given that I’m writing this in a hurry, that’s entirely possible. Here’s a purely hypothetical example of what an entry from this year’s bracket could look like (Note 1: this is NOT my entry. Note 2: These are the lowest seeds in the tournament; if you want to make this your entry, feel free, but do so knowing the risk of being Blutarskied):

Semi-finals:

Western Kentucky/LIU-Brooklyn

Vermont/UNC-Asheville

Championship game:

Western Kentucky/Vermont

Champion:

Vermont

Simple, right? As you begin to mull your picks, here are a couple of other things to keep in mind:

One thing to make sure you don’t do: Send me money to enter. As has always been the case, AUCNFFC is free.

In the first four years of the contest, we were competing for cheesy trinkets and I usually included a disclaimer that our FABULOUS PRIZES weren’t actually fabulous. And then Chris at Bocktown Beer and Grill blew that out of the water by putting up a gift card to the contest’s winner — as she’s doing again this year. All together, boys and girls: “Thank you, Chris!”

The tournament’s first-round games get underway around 12:15 Eastern Thursday; I’m not a huge stickler, but I’ll need to have your entries by noonish that day for you to be eligible.

How do you enter? Comment. Email. Twitter. DM. Text. Facebook. Smoke signal. Please feel free adding whatever commentary you wish regarding how you arrived at your picks; each entry will be listed in a comprehensive post that’ll show up at some point early Thursday afternoon.

The fine print (AKA The Juan Rule): As is tradition, Juan will once again be entered against his will, using either the Phil’s Mom Method or the Penny-Flipping Method.

To summarize:

Free.

Easy.

Deadline is noon Thursday.

Bocktown gift card for the winner.

Have any questions? Let me know. Otherwise, good luck to everyone — especially me.