The combination of sports and the Grateful Dead is no foreign concept. Legendary basketball player Bill “Grateful Red” Walton is a well-known follower of the band, and the Dead even helped the Lithuanian men’s basketball team go to the Summer Olympic Games in 1992.
In the spirit of the marriage of the Dead and sports, Dead For A Year is pleased to announce a Dead themed bracket pool for this year’s NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.
What we’ve done is assigned a Dead song to each team in the tournament. Not only will you have something interesting to listen to when you fill out your bracket, but it should be fun to see how far some of these selections go. So let the Dead help you pick a winner!
How we pick the tunes:
The idea here is to associate each tournament team with a specific Dead song. The challenge on our end becomes, “which song?” Ultimately, the selections are subjective, picked by myself and @mustangmods who suggested the idea in the first place. We each are picking half of the bracket.
The first obstacle is picking the shows. Our criteria for picking shows:
1. A show at the actual school
2. A show in the actual city
3. A show in a nearby metro area
4. A show in the state/ region
The Dead played on numerous college campuses throughout their career and in 46 of the 50 states so there are plenty of options. Once we selected a show, we picked a song to represent each team. If a tune correlates to a team somehow that’s great, but otherwise the picks are purely subjective.
- Once the field is selected(3/16/2014), you will be able to fill out your brackets here on the site using our own tournament bracket web app. Unfortunately, bracket functionality will not work on mobile devices. To make your selections please login with a desktop computer.
- One entry per person. All duplicate entries by the same person will be disqualified.
- Entry is free. There is no cost to participate.
- Brackets will go live shortly after the tournament field is announced on Sunday, March 16, 2014. Note: You will have access to 60 of the 68 teams initially. The 61st through 64th teams will be determined by the first round of the Tournament games on Tuesday, March 18, 2014 and Wednesday, March 19, 2014. Those games will not be counted in this contest. Prior to completion of those games, the 61st through 64th teams will be listed on our brackets page as “Play-In Winner” type format and Participants are free to pick “Play-In Winner” in the first round if they want to submit picks before such games are complete.
- The deadline for submitting a bracket is 11:00AM EST on March 20, 2014.
- Scoring:
| Round | 2 | 3 | Sweet 16 | Elite 8 | Final 4 | Championship Game |
| Points per correct pick | 1pt | 2pts | 4pts | 8pts | 16pts | 32pts |
- Ties: In the event of a tie, the individual whose prediction of the final score for the championship game is closest to the actual score of the game will be named the winner.
- Dead For A Year will provide an updated leaderboard after each day of tournament play.
- Prizes: All registration information must be valid to receive your prize. False registration information will result in disqualification. The winner will receive a $20 gift certificate to Amazon.com.
- Have fun!
