All the world is a bracket, and all the men and women and red pandas are merely seeded players, at least in March.
Ever since the NCAA Tournament did a favor to casual gamblers and people bored at their office jobs by expanding to 64 teams in 1985, the bracket has dominated the month of March in America.
In addition to being the catalyst for the proliferation of NCAA office pools and Joe Lunardi's pioneering work in the burgeoning field of bracketlogoly, the bracket format is applied to just about everything else, including Star Wars characters. At StarWars.com, the "This Is Madness: The Star Wars Character Tournament" has been going on paralel to the NCAA Tournament. In a shocking snub, the selection committee left Admiral Ackbar out of the field of 32. How does Jay Bilas feel about that?
While the bracket format has been applied to plenty of things in galaxies near and far, far away with no connection to college basketball -- beers, bands, animals and television couples, just to name a few -- the format may remain best suited for sports, past and present.
Over at Grantland, Rafe Bartholomew fashioned a bracket of the most hated college basketball players of the past 30 years. While the outcome may never have been in doubt, this bracket garnered the attention of one of its four No. 1 seeds, Christian Laettner.
We're pretty sure that Bobba Fett didn't tweet at the editors of StarWars.com. Of course, it remains unclear if Mandalorian armor comes equipped with wi-fi.
With the Final Four set to close out the competition that we all poorly diagrammed in our 2013 NCAA Tournament brackets, we've scoured the Internet for eight of the best brackets for the 2013 bracket bracket.
Here are eight of the most engaging brackets published around the web during the 2013 NCAA Tournament. Who survives and advances? Let us know in the comments if we missed any standout brackets.