Your 2026 March Madness Bracket Superlatives

Cue the iconic CBS theme song, because, ladies and gentlemen, we have a bracket.

The most wonderful night of the year, Selection Sunday, also occurring on Hollywood’s biggest night, could not have been more fitting considering that the entirety of the madness is always, as Martin Scorsese says, absolute cinema.

We all talk about the bracket from a storyline perspective as soon as it comes out. When the bracket is released, the cycle and the way that it’s talked about is absolutely cyclical because ultimately we are dumb sports fans talking about the most unpredictable, beautiful tournament that is win-or-go-home for 68 teams of college kids (that are now getting paid like professionals in some cases!).

Ahead of the tournament, let’s hand out some awards for the commonalities we see in the teams in our first reaction to the bracket.

The ChatGPT Team Award // Duke Blue Devils

This is a team that AI cooked in a lab when you ask it to make a blue-blooded #1 seed that no one with any idea about the context of college basketball will pick. They’re the historic program that prints out NBA prospects that has two sons of a former iconic NBA player and alum, and the #1 overall seed.

It won’t tell you that Coach K is no longer there or that they’re going to rely on freshmen as the focal point of their attack. Thanks, ChatGPT!

The Sister Jean Award for Mascot Storyline That Gets Too Much Coverage // The LIU Shark Fins Up Craze

Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

The late Sister Jean got more screen time than the actual team that played for Loyola Chicago that went to the Final Four, to the point that non-basketball coverage outlets like the Today Show had their hearts captured. It’s cute until it’s overdone, and there’s always something.

The candidate for this year is the LIU “Fins up” fans. It’s nice. They’re a 16 seed with absurd tropical colors and the sharks as their mascot, despite being in very non-tropical Long Island. We’re only going to hear about the fans putting their fins up until they inevitably lose as a 16 seed, and we won’t know the name of anyone on the roster in the process.

The Interstellar Award for the Team That Is Misunderstood // Virginia Cavaliers

Anyone who claims to actually understand the movie Interstellar, despite it being phenomenal, is a liar. Teams have a perception of their play style year after year through their branding, but the Virginia Cavaliers, which everyone is going to think of as the slow, methodical, defensive-minded Tony Bennett team, will be gravely mistaken.

Gone are the days when they scored 14 points in the play-in game in 2024. This Cavs team is 13th in offense and has 47% of its offense come from 3-pointers under Ryan Odom. You don’t get it, do you?

The Kemba Walker Candidate Team Award // Darius Acuff Jr., Arkansas Razorbacks

There was nothing quite like the legendary Kemba Walker performance, where he just put the team on his back in the iconic Big East tournament before taking the UConn team all the way to glory in 2011 with 23.5 points per game.

That candidate this year is Arkansas guard Darius Acuff Jr. He looks and plays like Allen Iverson, as we’ve gathered from the SEC Tournament Championship, but he has the killer instinct mentality that you love to see. Earlier this year, he was in a boot ahead of a game against Alabama, hours before tipoff, and took it off because he wanted to play, then scored 49 points. When Acuff is hot, it’s enough to cancel out any of the John Calipari of it all in March despite getting a tough draw in the West as the 4-seed.

The Tacko Fall Award for Name That Becomes a Meme During the Tournament // Chandler Bing, Vanderbilt Commodores

Let’s be clear: Chandler Bing plays around 15 minutes a game for the Vanderbilt Commodores.

But when the casuals who made the show Friends part of their personality find out there’s a guard that has the same name as the Matthew Perry character, they’re going to have a field day.

The “Well, There Goes My Bracket!” Award for Game Within the First Several Hours That Busts Everyone’s Bracket // Louisville vs USF

It’s never the ones where a giant gets slayed. It’s always the early slate that are a coin flip that everyone is in their head too much, that stares at you deeply each time you fill out a bracket. 

Louisville vs USF is the third game of the tournament as the 6th vs 11th seeds. There’s always the “realistic upset” pick that then becomes the overdone upset pick- it used to be the 5 vs 12 but has quickly become the 6 vs 11. This one has also become narrative-based: Louisville was in a week ACC and has been injured without Mikel Brown Jr., and USF has the “the coach gets to play in his hometown! It’s a de facto home game!” story on their side.

The bold ones who pick the Bulls as their “this is my token upset pick” are either going to have their bracket busted within the first couple of hours, or the popular, familiar face Cardinals are going down.

The ESPN First Take Award for the Team That Is Going to Fuel Internet Ferocity // Kansas Jayhawks

Darryn Peterson Jr. has been the most divisive entity on his team and among the public in college basketball this year. He’s been evaluated with Kobe Bryant comparisons as a prospect in a year where NBA teams are selling their souls for the #1 overall pick. He just happens to miss games, or half of them, for the flu or cramping, and, in the world of NIL, with agents and load management to protect himself, conspiracy theorists all year have speculated, for right or wrong, about his commitment to the team.

Bill Self even said he needs to finish games, and in some cases, they’ve won convincingly in his absence! The debates about Kansas’s fall out, if they win or lose with him, without him, or because of him, are going to create THE argumentative debate leading up to the NBA Draft.

Get some sleep in May, everyone.