Nerds on Sports

You think UNC’s got ups? You think UCLA’s got the defense? Just wait until you see the Nerds on Sports March Madness tournament!

T-1000 vs. Batman

What the T-1000 boasted in strength and adaptability, it lost in speed. The Caped Crusader leapt from rooftop to rooftop to avoid his pursuer. Analyzing a sample of liquid metal with his Batcave computer, he figured out the T-1000’s weakness quicker than Linda Hamilton did, and disabled it with a liquid nitrogen spray.

Winner: BATMAN.

Morpheus vs. Captain James T. Kirk

The two captains faced off in a garbage-strewn subway. Morpheus’ kung fu was strong, but Kirk kept luring him into situations where he couldn’t unleash his full power (narrow hallways, subway turnstiles, etc). Kirk lost some headway in the early rounds, however, by mistaking the superhumanly strong Morpheus for a robot. “What is love?” he bellowed, trying to trick his opponent’s programming. “What … is the meaning … of life?”

Battered and bloodied, Kirk finally tricked Morpheus into severing a phone junction box with a vicious roundhouse kick, cutting off his means of escape. He then wrapped Morpheus up in a headlock and threw him into the path of a train. But Morpheus shocked the crowd by backflipping off the opposite wall just before the train arrived and landing on Kirk’s head with a double knee strike. This was one for the record books - the closest match the Tournament has seen so far.

Winner: MORPHEUS.

Wolverine vs. Optimus Prime

This one went into triple overtime with no clear leader. Optimus Prime kept stepping on Wolverine, but the feisty Canuck couldn’t be kept down. Meanwhile, Wolverine had the cutting power but not the muscle mass to take down a robot ten times his height - despite having no problem with Sentinel robots of similar size.

Finally, a stroke of good fortune exposed the Autobot Matrix of Leadership to Wolverine’s claws. Optimus fought the remainder of the third overtime period with one hand protecting his chest cavity, giving Wolverine an advantage. As Optimus fell, the Matrix bounced out of his chest and landed in the hands of Judd Nelson.

Winner: WOLVERINE

Luke Skywalker vs. Legolas

A lot of commentators expected this one to go longer than it did. Legolas had some clear advantages in agility and precision, and a thousand years of experience over his young and headstrong Jedi opponent. However, lightsabers can still deflect arrows, whereas the reverse is never true.

Winner: LUKE SKYWALKER

Final Four

This week brings us to the conference championship games, which will determine who faces off in the finals next week. We’ve seen some upsets and some blowouts, but I think we can all agree that these competitors deserve to be here.

Hyrule Conference Championship: Batman vs. Morpheus

Paragon City Conference Championship: Wolverine vs. Luke Skywalker

Log on to our survey to vote for your favorite. We had several matches in this last round come down to just a few votes. Don’t let your favorite get knocked out because you didn’t vote for him!

Voting ends midnight on Sunday, April 6th. Good luck, and see you in the finals!

The NCAA bracket has excited exactly no one, with top seeds like UNC, Tennessee and Kansas cruising on through. But the Elite Eight at Nerds on Sports continues to surprise!

Blowouts

Given past success in defeating Superman, it shocked no one that Batman wiped the floor with Superman’s low-rent Jersey cousin, Mr. Incredible. A complicated series of super-gadgets and martial arts nerve strikes brought the invulnerable bruiser low, though the two superheroes parted as friends. The Operative looked awfully bad-ass, quoting obscure philosophers and wielding a totally cool katana, until Optimus Prime ran him over. Nine or ten times.

Meanwhile, fans were treated to the longest first half of the tournament so far, as Rick Deckard insisted on putting Luke Skywalker through the tedious process of the Voight-Kampff test. Determining with six minutes left in the game that Skywalker was not, in fact, a robot, Deckard seemed at a loss and quickly fell to Skywalker’s lightsaber. “Don’t get cocky, kid,” he warned after the game.

Squeakers

Legolas and Harry Potter traded the lead several times before Legolas slammed one home before the buzzer. Mark Schlabach at ESPN.com had said that Potter’s “keys to the game” included not brooding for hours over consequential choices, advice the boy wizard apparently failed to take. Morpheus and Buffy Summers had an epic kung-fu duel on rain-swept rooftops that went into quintuple-overtime. The terrorist mastermind finally capitalized on the fact that it wasn’t actually air he was breathing and pulled out a win in the end. Indiana Jones lasted far longer against Wolverine than any of the pundits anticipated, but eventually succumbed.

Upsets

Fan favorite Jack Bauer broke a lot of hearts - and a lot of brackets - over the weekend, losing to the T-1000. Under the mistaken belief that the shapeshifting robot could turn itself into a bomb, Bauer wasted valuable clock time asking where the bomb was and then trying to defuse it. The T-1000 took on the appearance of Chloe, a trusted coworker of agent Bauer, to close in for the final blow.

And all the magical scimitars and panther miniatures in the world couldn’t give Drizz’t Do’urden a win over Captain James T. Kirk. Kirk somehow ended up shirtless and glazed with oil, and he seemed by far the less graceful of the two, but he avoided the dark elf’s whirling blades and beat him with trickery and secular humanist know-how.

The Elite Eight

The final match approaches! Be sure to cast your vote in each of these match-ups!

Hyrule Conference

T-1000 vs. Batman
Morpheus vs. Captain James T. Kirk

Paragon City Conference

Wolverine vs. Optimus Prime
Luke Skywalker vs. Legolas

Voting ends Sunday at Midnight, as usual. Your votes make the difference!

(Remember, you vote by taking this survey, not by leaving comments)

VTech coach Seth Greenberg may be griping about this year’s NCAA men’s basketball bracket - but nobody could complain about the Nerds on Sports Tournament! It’s had its share of triumphs and surprises already, and it’s only a week old!

Blowouts
In the Paragon City Conference, Wolverine absolutely demolished Bowser, controlling the clock from the start of play and refusing to let up until the buzzer sounded. Coach Koopa suggested Bowser’s all-mushroom regimen in the month before the tournament may not have been a good move. Earlier that day, Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker wiped the floor with commando Solid Snake. Colonel Roy Campbell complained to reporters that Snake should have been higher seeded, to avoid such a disastrous first-round washout. He ended his press conference by shouting, “SNAAAAKE” into the microphone. Also, Curt Schilling injured his shoulder in his 32-6 loss to Harry Potter, a first-year rookie out of Hogwarts Academy.

The Hyrule Conference was more closely matched, the only blowout coming when Batman outwitted legendary swordsman Li Mu Bai. The Caped Crusader’s proficiency with dozens of martial styles overwhelmed Li Mu Bai’s mastery of only one. Neither of the two combatants had any words for the press following the game.

Squeakers
The Hyrule Conference, however, went down to the wire on far more showings. The T-1000 nearly suffered a humiliating upset against Inigo Montoya, only winning in the 4th quarter when the quixotic Spaniard began to tire. Paul Atredies and Captain James T. Kirk went blow for blow in a truly memorable game. Captain Kirk’s experience in unseating alien gods proved handy in defeating the God Emperor, however, and Muad’Dib fell in the end. And in a match that we refuse to call the “Ultimate Jack-Off,” Jack Bauer narrowly beat Captain Jack Sparrow. Bauer credited his victory to the fact that his sidearm, a Sig Sauer P220, carries more than one cartridge in its magazine and does not take 30 seconds to reload.

Upsets
Once again we return to the Paragon City conference, and man is your office pool in trouble! Dr. Indiana Jones turned over the Alien Queen, luring her into a complex network of traps that hinged on obscure Aramaic texts. The Alien Queen, not knowing Aramaic, fell to its death. Many pundits expected Warmech to wipe the floor with harried cop Rick Deckard, given Warmech’s titanium armor and nuclear payload. But these experts forgot that Rick Deckard only has one item on his resume for the last fifteen years and that’s murdering robots.

Back in Hyrule: bulletproof plating didn’t help Master Chief either - he got staked in the chest and kicked in the head by Buffy Summers. After blowing the Marine up with one of his own plasma grenades, Buffy said something that was probably meant to be clever but just came off wordy and weird.

Round Two - The Sweet Sixteen

Hyrule Conference

Jack Bauer vs. T-1000

Batman vs. Mr. Incredible

Buffy Summers vs. Morpheus

Captain James T. Kirk vs. Drizz’t Do’urden

Paragon City Conference

Indiana Jones vs. Wolverine

Optimus Prime vs. The Operative

Rick Deckard vs. Luke Skywalker

Legolas vs. Harry Potter

Your Vote Counts!

Voting ends on midnight Sunday, March 23rd. Choose your side and stay tuned for the results!

Nerds on Sports is hosting its own March tournament - to see who’s the winner among all nerd icons. We sent out invitations to thousands of video game characters, comic book heroes and sci-fi action stars. Thirty-two responded and the tournament was formed.

You decide the winner - by voting in our scientific surveys!

Bracket #1: The Hyrule Conference

Bracket #2: The Paragon City Conference

Edit: Don’t forget to vote in both brackets!

The Hyrule Conference

Jack Bauer
Captain Jack Sparrow
Batman
Li Mu Bai
Master Chief
Buffy Summers
Paul Atredies
Captain James T. Kirk
Drizzt Do’urden
Major Kusanagi
Morpheus
Serra Angel
Snake Eyes
Mr. Incredible
The T-1000
Inigo Montoya

The Paragon City Conference

The Alien Queen
Indiana Jones
The Predator
Optimus Prime
Warmech
Rick Deckard
Captain Lysander
Legolas
Curt Schilling
Harry Potter
Solid Snake
Luke Skywalker
The Operative
Gordon Freeman
Wolverine
Bowser

Cast your votes before midnight on Sunday the 16th. We’ll tally the winners, then move on to the next bracket on Tuesday the 18th.

So almost 2 weeks ago I retreated to my cave of depression and solitude after some certain footballing events. But the time and reflecting have pulled me out of hiding and back here to blabbering on about nothing. Aren’t you glad?

So to get you back in the mood for my posts, I’m going to start you off with some hot ladies. First off the Indy Car hottie and Go Daddy front woman — Danica Patrick. She’s what Sports Illustrated is using to rationalize the “sports” in the Swimsuit Edition this year. Check out the full spread and the interview with Dan Patrick (Yes, it’s hilarious that they have similar names — I can’t read the article without laughing. I also can’t stop the sarcasm.) Also, what’s with the granny panties in picture 33? Since this is swimsuit edition time, for more hotness check out the athlete’s wives section or the bodypainting section. Also you can read the interviews with each model so you can decide which ones are bitches.

After the hot women I want to mention some nerdy news. EA Games has extended their license with the NFL. So I guess they hope Madden stays alive for 5 more years and they don’t have to make many innovations. Don’t you love the “free market?” EA is a bitch.

I hear Uno (aka Ch. K-Run’s Park Me In First) the beagle was named Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show Tuesday night over some champion poodle bitches. First beagle to ever win the award at Westminster. One thing to note is that even though Snoopy is a beagle, he doesn’t look anything a beagle. This probably explains Snoopy’s lack of a Best in Show award (or even a Best in Class award). Actually Snoopy is nothing like a beagle. Uno walks on four legs and doesn’t fly around on his house. Uno doesn’t type notes on a typewriter — he uses his laptop. He looks so cute when he’s working and wearing glasses.

Oh and one more thing: pitchers and catchers (no, it’s not gay) have reported to spring training and Josh Beckett is fat.

10 Link - Bobby

“As a multi-tool player, he’s got all the versatility I need. He’s a swimmer, comfortable in ice or heat environments and he’s a veteran that just keeps getting better with time.” - Bobby

Plus, his victory poses - done whenever he extends his lifespan, defeats a boss, or finds some ratty old leather pouch - can not be topped in its grandiosity. You don’t see me humming those memorable bars whenever I “discover” my lunch at work. Not since I had to switch jobs for…some reason, anyway.

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With the next professional sports drafts many months away, Nerds On Sports is more than happy to satiate your needs for pointless ranking and and serpentine pick orders. An intrepid band of nine Internet brothers thoughtfully and methodically, and certainly not arbitrarily, chose characters and figures from the wide-ranging world of video games in order to form a team that would…um…I’m not sure. Most of my requests to clarify this issue were ignored. It was moot in the end anyway, as we weren’t even able to complete three rounds before the thread was abandoned and certain members tried to spread memes about Full House slash instead. Anyway, here’s the Round 1 analysis:

1 Solid Snake - Brett

“Why Snake:
He has a mullet.
He routinely takes on Hind D helicopters with nothing but a gun. (any MGS game)
He runs around high security military base in a cardboard box. (any MG game)
He can ride a skateboard as well as Tony Hawk. (see MGS3: Subsistence)” - Brett

Can’t fault Brett for this pick, especially since I want a cardboard box like that. It would be handy for, like, stealing t-shirts from a shopping mall kiosk, or getting adolescents into R rated movies. Can’t think of what else it would be good for.
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You ever wish you had a championship ring you could accidentally give to a Russian? Ever wish you had something tangible that you could wear to let everyone know how great you are at Madden? Perhaps you have wanted to hand over a weeks paycheck to EA Games? Are you a Yankees fan and desire a large jewel encrusted ring to use when you tell all other baseball fans to “kiss the rings?” Can your girlfriend whoop your ass in Madden and you’re looking for the perfect way to propose? Do you enjoy shelling out a few hundred bills for large flashy finger bling? Are you deranged enough to think that one of these rings will make you cool? Is your name Sonic and are you a hedgehog? You think that if Peyton “get off my fucking TV” Manning can get a ring, so can you? Maybe you just want the world to know that you can dominate a computer?

If you answered yes to more than one of these questions let me just say: What the fuck is wrong with you? Really? I would like to know. Send me an email at imcrazy AT nerdsonsports.com and let me know. Also for you I have this lovely link where you can learn about the little ring that Madden2008 will be offering.

Now if this were the “One Ring” or a ring of +2 agility then we’d be in business… but it’s not.

Next year we can only hope for Madden 2009 Cock Rings. (”Ya like that? I’m gonna fuck you like I did the Colts in the Super Bowl!”)