Ultimate 6er | Indianapolis Breweries Ahead of the NCAA Championship

As Georgia and Alabama fans flood Indianapolis this weekend ahead of Monday’s NCAA Football Championship game, they’ll discover a great beer city with top-notch breweries surrounding Lucas Oil Stadium.

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Ultimate 6er | Ultimate Sweet 6(teen)er

I must admit I’m writing this with slightly less enthusiasm than my 2015 write up celebrating the teams that survived the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Sadly (at least … Read More

Mascot Madness: Which Mascot Would Win in a Fight?

Yes, I’m back at it again. The great thing about March Madness is that the teams are different every year, so the insane question of which mascot would win in a fight can be asked again and again, with new anthropomorphic characters to hypothetically duke it out. Read More

Objective Bracketology: Be the Only One in Your Pool to Use These Methods

With March Madness kicking off this week, everyone is watching their brackets closely to see which teams will rise to the top of the NCAA tournament. From detailed player analysis to superstitious patterns, people spend a lot of time and energy coming up with the best angle for filling out a bracket so that they can win their March Madness pool

And then some other jerk who arbitrarily picked their teams wins.

So if you can’t beat them, join them, right? I’ve covered this in the past with brackets based on things like which team’s mascot would win in a fight, and a year later, which team’s school boasts the most famous alumni.  Those brackets did not do well. There’s no reason to think that this year’s Mascot Madness will do any better. Maybe that’s because I used totally subjective judgments to determine who should win each match-up. Maybe what my bracketology needs is a conceit based on data with much more empirical value, but with the same basketball wisdom.

In other words, I came up with brackets that are objective, but have NOTHING to do with how well the teams play basketball.

I am for real entering these brackets in some public pools, just so I can see which strategy is most practical, and how many actual college basketball fans I can beat. If you really don’t know who to pick in your pool, give one of these brackets a shot. Give March a bit more Madness.

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March Methods | A “How To” Guide For Completing Your NCAA Tournament Bracket

March Madness is upon us and with that the annual tradition of filling in a tournament bracket. The tournament plays out in very unpredictable fashion, making it extremely unlikely to pick even the first round games correctly, let alone the whole thing. Here are 10 possible strategies to setting a bracket that will defeat your friends, family and co-workers, earning you bragging rights and possibly a cash payout. Read More

Weekly Growler Fill | National Beer News Roundup

Last week in the craft brewniverse: Coors is going to focus more on it’s craft brands, Copper Kettle is releasing Le Chapeau for the second year in a row, and the Brewers Association put out a list with the Top 50 breweries in the country. Crack open a cold one while you get yourself up to date with this edition of the Weekly Growler Fill.

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Time to Move Major Sporting Events from Indiana

It’s incredibly disturbing and ass-backwards that a column like this must be written in this day and age, but when the governor of Indiana signs a bill that could potentially allow businesses to discriminate against the LGBT community it seems you have little choice.

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March Madness Depression

Oh to be a college basketball fan. To think watching a full season of NCAA hoops earns you any distinction among the various friend, co-worker or family pools that amass during this frantic period. To be reminded that the chances of glory and bragging rights are only occur by happenstance. To be reminded how one games performance means nothing in the next game, and to bemoan only what could have been. That my friends, is what March Madness does to me. Read More

Pop Culture Bracketology 2015

It’s a tale as old as time. Or, at least as old as March Madness bracketology.

You look over the bracket. You study up on the teams. You consider expert opinions. You even look up Vegas odds for every game. And finally you make smart, well-informed, clever picks for the NCAA tournament. And you enter your bracket into the office/school/family/friend pool.

And the winner of the pool? That one damn entrant who has never seen a basketball game, and picked teams based on which school has the best colors, or what names sound funniest, or even just whatever teams they’d heard of.

The beauty – and agony – of March Madness is that no one can predict what will happen. The race often goes not to the strong or the clever or the patient… but to the random. So here at PorchDrinking, we’ve come up with a very pop-culture way to pick your bracket.  Read More

NCAA Basketball Preview | 5 stories to watch

And so begins another exciting season of college hoops in a short span of days. While the pain and joy of last March Madness may still be fresh, it is time to begin waltzing down the familiar path of preparing— and thinking you know college hoops— for your next pool to recoup your pride and treasure.

Preseason ranking have been posted and many sports analysts have already made their predictions….usually about how good Kentucky will be this season. But believing that we can all agree that BBN doesn’t deserve all the news and hype until regular season tip off on November 14, let us move onto some other interesting topics that are developing for the 2014-15 NCAA Basketball season.

And no, Rashad McCants and Roy Williams tiff doesn’t count as basketball news anymore.

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Welcome to the InterNEAT! Volume 32

Happy Tuesday, you guys! Can you believe this is the 32nd edition of Welcome to the InterNEAT!? That’s 2/3 of a year!

5. Now that college basketball is … Read More

Show Me the Money | NBA Two Year Policy

What do you think of the “One and Done” Rule (a.k.a. the NBA eligibility rule)?

Two years ago after Kentucky hoisted the National Championship trophy: the rule isn’t perfect, but … Read More

NCAA Men’s Basketball Preview

Regular Season Conference Predictions

With NCAA basketball tipping off officially this weekend, conferences have been shuffled, created and reduced. The biggest winner being the ACC, with the addition of Syracuse, … Read More

What American Sports Can Learn from English Football

The start of the American football season almost coincides with the start of the English football season, and with it optimism, high expectations, and hope that this will be … Read More

NCAA Mascot Madness – Genius Bracketology

This year, I’m trusting in the unpredictable. I’m doing something bold. I’m trusting my brackets not to expert advice or probability or whether I believe a high-scoring offense or a solid defensive core will win basketball games.

I’m making a bracket based on which mascot would win in a fight. For every game. It’s perhaps the first time someone has gone on the internet and actually advocated mascot-based bracketology. It’s NCAA Mascot Madness. It’s genius.

For safety – and science – I made a bracket that was based on my own (mostly safe) picks. And I’m stacking it up against a bracket which – by my own arbitrary determination – asks which team’s mascot could kick the other’s ass. The results are fascinating. Read More

NCAA Tournament West Region

NCAA Tournament West Region

The West region is being called the weakest of the four this tournament and rightfully so. There was a lot of discussion on which team would get the final number one seed and Gonzaga beat out Ohio State and Miami for the last number one spot.

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NCAA Selection Show Live Blog

Join us at 6 p.m. Eastern 4 p.m. Mountain time as we cover the NCAA Selection show.  We’ll break down the biggest snubs, seedings and surprises from the committee’s selection.  Be sure to join in on the conversation when we launch the chat option in our live blog!  Also get your tweets onto the live blog by using the hash tag #pdselectionshow

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