We’re thrilled to unveil the brackets for the Outsports Team/League of the Year contest (get full bracket here)! Thirty-seven groups entered the contest this year, all of them worthy of the honor.
We’re thrilled to unveil the brackets for the Outsports Team/League of the Year contest! Thirty-seven groups entered the contest this year, all of them worthy of the honor.
To advance to the next round, a group must have the most votes in its one-on-one matchup. After each round, the votes are reset to zero and voting commences again. Once the winner of each bracket is determined, the final four will be judged by a panel of gay-sports experts who will choose the overall winner. On top of all the glory and adulation, the winner will also receive $250.
Each bracket is named after a gay-sports hero: Former NFL player David Kopay; Tennis legend Martina Navratilova; Former NBA player John Amaechi; and Former NFL player Esera Tuaolo.
The voting each week will be conducted each week from Thursday, 12:01am to Monday, 11:59pm, all Eastern Time. The voting for each round will be:
March 5-9: Round 1. 10 teams will be involved to get the field to 32 teams.
March 12-16: Round 2. All 32 remaining teams will be matched up to get to the Sweet 16.
March 19-23: Round 3. All 16 teams left will be matched up to get to the Elite 8.
March 26-30: Round 4. All 8 teams left will be matched up to get to the Final Four.
You’ll see that there are 10 teams participating in the first round. That is by design, because the field needs to get to 32 teams before full participation is possible. These 10 teams were chosen in part based on size, in part based on groups we felt could benefit from some added exposure on the site (we’ll be profiling each on our Jock Talk Blog in the first week), and in part based on random selection. This process is by no means perfect, but it was what we felt was the fairest.
Those 10 groups were paired up by region, with one Coast-to-Coast matchup (Golden Gate Wrestling in San Francisco v. Ft. Lauderdale Tennis).
One thing you may notice is that there are no seeds. We did that for several reasons, most importantly that we felt it would unfairly bias the voting. We want YOU to tell US what teams deserve to advance. To that end, there is no pattern to how each bracket is laid out; The first team listed in each bracket is not necessarily what might be considered the “top seed.”
Good luck to all the people involved, and keep checking back for updates and voting!
