hot guy march madness

It’s that time of year again, folks! A time when you have to tie your hair back, sharpen your pencils, and make some tough choices. Yes, it is officially March Madness season—though not the kind you might be used to.

Last year I came across this bracket created by comedian Matt Bellassai, and it quickly took my friends and I by storm. (Which you can read about here)

This year, as March approached and talks of the actual March Madness started circulating, we began to wonder if we’d once again get to shamelessly and shallowly pit men against each other, and to our luck, a new bracket was released this past week!

If I’m being totally honest, I have an easier time filing out a basketball bracket than I do with one like this. I like to think I live a pretty “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” kind of life, and so I find it hard (and mean?) “eliminating” people based on their looks.

I don’t say this sound noble, I say this to introduce you to my mind, which assumes that the choices I make in this bracket will have some sort of ripple effect on those associated with it. As if my choosing Michael B. Jordan over Joe Jonas in the first round will get back to Joe Jonas, causing him to feel such shame he cancels the Jonas Brothers’ Reunion. Or if my eliminating of Timothee Chalamet in the first round will prevent us from ever becoming best friends—though the sadness associated with that fact may help him finally win that Oscar (so you’re welcome, Timmy.)

Another obstacle I come across in these brackets is that I have to constantly remind myself that the whole point is to figure out who the hottest guy is. Going through each round, I’ll get hung up on, “but he’s so cute!” or “but he was so good in that one movie!” or “but he’s hilarious and that’s attractive” or “I’m being unfair, he’s a really nice guy!”

Now that I think about it, this really isn’t that different from how I fill out brackets for the actual basketball tournament. One year I chose teams based solely on their school mascots and how friendly the team seemed in interviews. (Which by the way, I almost won that year.)

So as you can imagine, with all of the ethical standards and uninvited emotional attachment to the men included on this year’s bracket, it took me a good chunk of time to fill it out. I put one guy through farther than any of my friends solely because he has a hand tattoo. Another guy made it through because “he can just pull off sweatpants and that matters for some reason.” And one guy was eliminated because, “I just can’t picture, you know, casually going to Target with him.”

Again, I’m really not cut out for these things.

At the end of the day, my winner was Noah Centineo, who I am unashamedly cougar-ing it up for. The dude is 22, I am 28. *shrugs* Sorry.

(No, really, I am sorry to everyone I eliminated.)

Among my friends, there were three back to back wins for Jason Momoa. So congrats, Aquaman, it sounds like there are plenty of fish in your sea.

Yikes.

I apologize for that one.

I consider myself to be a huge sports fan. There is almost no sport I can’t get into. Take Basketball for example, while isn’t necessarily my favorite sport, I can get behind it, especially during the craziness of March Madness.

This year, as I prepared for the start of the NCAA tournament, I came across a bracket.

This was not your average bracket, however. There were no rankings or underdogs or Cinderella stories. There weren’t even any basketball teams. This bracket was made entirely of hot guys pitted against each other to win an entirely different prize: the honor of hottest hot guy.

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All credit for this bracket goes to Matt Bellassi (who you can find here). He created the bracket for his podcast, with the sole purpose of deciding who among the men would have the grand honor of winning his heart. After coming across this bracket on Twitter, I immediately printed it out for my roommates and I to complete. You know, for bonding/research purposes.

Once we all got home from work, we sat at the dining room table like middle school kids doing their homework, and hunched over our assignment. While initially enthusiastic and giggly, soon the three of us became pensive and quiet.

This. Was. SERIOUS.

There were so many factors to consider. So many things to analyze and overanalyze. I mean, once you eliminated someone, they were gone, out of your life, 100% not going to be your soulmate. The pressure was practically unbearable!

At one point I eliminated someone because of a bad mustache incident a few years back, and then put someone else through because of a good mustache in recent years. One matchup was determined by my assumption that one guy would be more apt to “go outside with me,” while another we all determined was a no because, “his shadow would be scarily tall.”

In many ways it felt as if the men were all standing around us waving and smiling, anxious to win their next matchup and secretly hopeful to be awarded the top honor. Meanwhile, me, Natalee and Rachel were the modern day Simon, Paula and Randy, sitting behind our desks and listening looking close for just the right voice face.

In the end, the men who took home the top honor in our house were Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Hemsworth, and Rami Malek. We’ve sent word to their publicists and expect an embarrassing display of roses/candy/etc. to arrive from all three any day now.

Once we were all finished with our brackets, we discovered that while we each believed we had filled our brackets out correctly, we didn’t actually follow the directions put in place by Matt Bellassi. With further research I came to find there were questions that were meant to be associated with each round in order to help you make your decisions.

They were as follows:

Round 1: Who would conquer a bear to save me?

Round 2: Who would win in a mud wrestling fight against the other?

Round 3: Who can bake the moistest cake?

Round 4: Who can carve a ham with their hands tied behind their back?

Round 5: Who can crack a walnut with their butt?

I’d like to say that should I have filled out the bracket this way I would have stood by my man and still ended the day as Kimberlee Gyllenhaal, but I really don’t know the walnut cracking capacity of his butt or how it could match up to that of the other men on this list. But I suppose that’s just something you have to accept when you marry someone. As the old saying goes, it’s the size of their heart, not the strength of their butt cheeks.