Kentucky vs. Texas: Civil War and the NCAA

One of my favorite things about NCAA Basketball March Madness is when the bracket match-ups offer a game like: Tennessee vs. Ohio State. Rather than considering the basketball team, I like to imagine it a partial civil war. Who would win if it were truly all of Tennessee facing all of Ohio? I mean, Ohio's got a lot of huge cities and its people are responsible for presidential elections, but Tennesseans are just crazy. Then again, most people in Nashville are transplants, and thus don't have much allegiance to their state. Ohio just may win on plain patriotism.

In college, my friends and I set up our own brackets and tried to determine who would win a bracket-style championship of all 50 states.

It came down to the final two: Texas versus .... Kentucky.

It's obvious how Texas made it so far. They are loud, and they are even louder about their Texas pride. We all know about Texas and it's fancy six flags and its ability to to secede if it wants to and how it used to be its own country and blah blah blah we're-so-great-we're-from-Texas.

But few people know about the vicious pride that native -- and even transplants -- Kentuckians have.

And that's why I think that Kentucky could be that Cinderella state that sneaks in and destroys New York (they're all transplants and they're all focused on themselves ... KY would roll over Manhattanites easily in a battle), flattens Montana (sure they've got the Unibomber, but they're totally outnumbered), and annihilates California (they're all high). Kentucky would just roll to the Final Four, sail to the Final Two, and everyone would wonder how they hell they ended up facing Texas.

Thus is the question though. Would Texas be so confident in its victory that Kentucky's pride and insanity (a large percentage of my friends have some form of Kentucky tattoo) takes them by surprise? Or would they be so upset that we had the gall to challenge them that they just destroyed us?

I think it would be a mighty battle. I'm going to concede that Texas would eventually win, but only because they need simply offer up some chips-n-salsa on the battlegrounds and we'd be toast. (My loyalty is easily purchased with the right kind of tortilla chips.) We could offer them bourbon, but I don't think they could handle it. Them's fightin' words, I know ... but hey, my blog comments have been minimal lately ... time to pick a fight!

Anyway, my NCAA final four is: Louisville, Memphis, North Carolina, Syracuse. With Louisville winning, obviously.

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