March Crapness: Welcome to the crap!

Which is your favorite crapcan? Check back later this week to see matchups and next week to vote for your favorite cars and teams. (The Rusty Hub photo)

March Madness is a time for America's best unpaid athletes to raise the profiles of their respective universities in order to generate piles of revenue for the institutions' respective athletic war chest. And there's basketball, too, which is some kind of game, I'm told.

What fascinates me, though, is the tournament bracket. The collective "Oozinahs" reverberate through corporate America the day after the Selection Committee announces The Bracket when literally millions of peons waste a Monday scribbling down the names of universities they only know of through Wikipedia, scratching them out, conferring with ESPN's second-by-second coverage, reprinting the damn thing and then just outright guessing their way through it while they tell Frank in the next cubicle how they know every player in the tournament before handing the bracket over to the office bookie along with a crisp $10 bill.

Well, 2013 is different, my crapcan friends. In 2013, low-buck racing gets its own tournament: March Crapness. There's no money for entry and no winners really, because everyone in the sport is a winner...or everyone is a loser. I still haven't figured which.



Anyway, the last team standing gets Internet bragging rights and maybe some half-assed trophy cobbled together out of things laying around our office.

We're not sure where the trend of March Madness spinoffs came from; the earliest we ever heard of it was from the Road to Springfield tournament held in 2001, where voters cast their ballots for the best Simpsons characters. Since then, the spin-off tournament has blossomed to include all kinds of things, including The Consumerist's 2012 Tournament for Worst Company. Most of them are silly, but at least you expect ours to be garbage.

The winners will get a wicked awesome ride in this bagged Caddy limo. Actually, that's not at all true; we just wanted to put this photo here because it's awesome. (The Rusty Hub photo)

So then...what can you the reader (and voter) expect from March Crapness? Here are the basics:


- At the moment, our esteemed and unique March Crapness Selection Committee are tallying their votes for inclusion. If you don't like the inclusions (and exclusions), too bad. Start your own pointless, vote-based sham of a tournament.

- The March Crapness Selection Committee, having used a "computer" to assist in the selections, will release the bracket the same day the NCAA releases the "real" bracket. Look for the seedec March Crapness bracket on Sunday, March 17.

- Just like the NCAA tournament, the first matchups begin Tuesday, March 19 and will have four matchups per day through the first three rounds ending April 2, after which there will be two matchups per day until the Final Four, which will have just one daily matchup.

- The daily posts will contain the four matchups with a brief description of each team and each matchup will feature a poll. Feel free to base your vote on whatever merits you consider most important: car choice, garage engineering, appearance, humor, quality of human beings (or lack thereof), persistence or even success (whatever the hell that is) could factor into your decision, as could a multitude of other savage credentials. Vote however you like; this is America.


- Votes will be tallied starting when each set of matchups is posted; these will be schedule for 1 p.m. EST each day. Voting for each matchup will close at 10 a.m. EST the following day.

- Because there's no actual fair way to seed a tournament like this, ALL SEEDING IS DONE RANDOMLY using random.org. Don't like the matchups? Blame the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and/or go stick your head in a pig.

- Stay updated on the bracket by checking the 'March Crapness' tab on the page's header. We'll have a full schedule on that tab, as well as updated brackets.

- Tell others about March Crapness by using the hashtag #crapness on Twitter. The more people that vote, the better the outcome will be! Share and enjoy!

- Want to see a sample matchup? Here you go:

TRASHED TRANNY REGION - PLAY-IN
Team Resignation (16) vs. Robert Muldoon the Cat (17)

Team Resignation - Ford Escort

The author is mostly responsible for the appearance of this car but places blame for its poor performance on a certain other automotive journalist. (The Rusty Hub photo)

Team Resignation's rolling tribute to Richard M. Nixon manages to fail in spectacular ways. It's a pile of sadness that Rusty Hub editor Eric Rood has in the past taken to new levels of slow.

Resume: 24 Hours of LeMons - 1 Heroic Fix; 1 Democracy!

Robert Muldoon - Domestic Shorthair

The real March Crapness posts will have considerably fewer cats, but we're told the Internet has no shortage of them. (The Rusty Hub)

Robert Muldoon has yet to race in a crapcan series, but he is a muscular 15-pound cat who enjoys drinking from faucets, sleeping on laps and subtly dreaming of murder.

Resume: Named after a character in Jurassic Park

[POLL GOES HERE]


Until then, hopefully, you're wrenching feverishly for your first (or possibly second) race of the year. But take a periodic pause to peruse the Crapness each day.

Feel free to shoot any questions to eric@therustyhub.com and we'll respond as promptly as our feline master/game warden allows.