Athletes:
(3) Steve Nash vs. (4) Landon Donovan
It’s obvious Steve Nash wishes he played soccer. Actually, I think he wishes he was Landon Donovan. It’s kind of embarrassing for a professional athlete to be that desperate.
I mean, we get it, man. You like soccer and all, but you play basketball. Get over it. We know the only reason you got involved with the Vancouver Whitecaps was to get closer to Landon.
Despite Nash’s extensive, stalker-like, bordering-on-criminal pre-game research, Donovan advances rather comfortably.
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Entertainers:
(1) Bono vs. (3) Conan O’Brien
Might Conando just be crazy enough to pull off the biggest upset of the tournament thus far? As we saw in his domination of Ben Stiller, Bono literally does everything.
But, with the tournament taking place on the Internet, Conan has the home-court advantage behind him. After winning the tipoff—obviously—Conan jumps out to an early lead. The crowd and his seemingly endless energy drives him on. But the late night host wears himself out, as he’s completely incapable of sitting still during halftime.
While Conan’s skin tone and hair color normally pose a massive visual problem for his opponents, it’s no big deal for Bono. He weathers the early storm and pulls away by a score that makes the game look more lopsided than it actually was.
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Businessmen:
(1) Bill Gates vs. (2) Steve Jobs
They meet again. If there were a time for Jobs to overtake Gates, it would be here.
But Jobs barely snuck by Buffett, just making it through based on a technicality. Everyone’s ignoring the fact that he just looked plain awful in the previous round. Jobs is that upset pick we’ll all look back on and say, “What the hell were we thinking?” Gates’ continuous onslaught of charitable money is just too much for Jobs despite a number of valiant late attempts at releasing something “sleek and new.”
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World Leaders:
(1) Dalai Lama vs. (2) Pope Benedict XVI
Due to some implicit biases within the selection committee, the two pre-tournament favorites meet before the Final Four. The computer rankings say that the Pope and the Dalai Lama employ the most efficient offenses and defenses in all the land. The numbers say that this game should go into an infinite number of overtimes, only ending with the inevitable destruction of the Earth in 2012.
But then numbers are often wrong (see: the bracket I had with Texas playing Purdue in the national championship), and they were in this instance.
The game went into triple overtime. And that was only after what some called a “miraculous” comeback from Pope Benedict to end the second half. But tired legs eventually caught up with the head of the Catholic Church in the third extra frame. The Dalai Lama has taken some time off recently, and he looked fresh even at the final whistle. A late pardon for the entire Jewish people was not enough for the Pope to advance.
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You got some underwhelming seeds here: bill gates, lance donovan, argh! nothing against lance but andres iniesta is so much more a compelling player and person. a real hero on and off the field. and sure, bill gates has used his billions to do good but the guy is an utter asshole who used underhanded tactics to monopolize (and charge monopoly pricing for ) PC software.
Come on guys, you can do better than this!
We love you guys!! Who else would run a competition for Most Good Man??
So, your #1 good man is someone who is celibate, who renounces family and fatherhood, and who sustains a religious patriarchy? Is this a joke? This post runs counter to everything else I’ve read on this site.
I knew you wrote this Ryan since you had a soccer player in the final! Being a fellow aficianado, I love that of course, but a different player comes to mind for me: Tim Howard. His success despite dealing with Tourette’s Syndrome has been really inspirational for kids who are often bullied & ostracized for their disability.
Let the debating begin…
cornel west was robbed, not even in bracket! :/