Bracketology
Welcome back!
To pick up where we left off, the next string of emails was during March Madness of 2014 – so obviously a bracket challenge was the best way to decide, once and for all, who was the hottest British man.
Confession: I don’t understand brackets. To Wikipedia! (Seriously, that’s what I did. I went to Wikipedia and looked up how it worked.) I came away from my internet research with what I considered a pretty strong understanding of seeding. I was totally wrong, and realized it as soon as I tried to contextualize my learning in the scope of basketball, but that didn’t stop me from sending this email:
“We should reorder the categories with the one seeds down, right? We have 20 men, so five seeds in four regions? For the one seeds, we have three people the same in the top category. Because I have been on Pinterest in the last 24 hours, I concede to Tom Hiddleston as the last top pick, but maybe bottom of the top seeds. But would like Cavill as maybe the lowest second seed? Since you had him in a lower category?”
We then basically went on to name our top pairs in each category. For later reference, my top seeds went something like this:
I’d match first round to:
- Beckham v Hiddles (rip off the bandaid)
- Bale v Law
Because it’s a democracy, you guys, we swapped around our groups to fit what we both could live with. All you need to understand about this step is that we’d both apparently seen a few Michael Fassbender movies the night before, and Haley was concerned about having a ginger vs. ginger situation, and also needed to get this across (look back to that thing about the night before) “I think I would move Ewan up, Andy down. BUT, that’s just an opinion. HOW is Fassbender a 5 seed?! I’m not complaining, just saying that the freaking UK puts out some MEN.” For another reference, here are Haley’s second seeds:
Two seeds:
- Elba v Lincoln* (accent battle)
- Cumberbatch v Cavill
Ultimately, we made our decisions. But then. THEN. Paul McGann was sexy at GallifreyOne and I heard about it. And then I started watching Bridesmaids at every Bachelorette Party. So, we had to make some additions, which went something like this: I threw out names, Haley offered feedback.
Matthew Goode - England - YES.
Paul McGann - England - Eh, I had to google him. But you might have stronger feelings, so wherever is fine.
David Bowie - England - Absolutely no attraction, so I wouldn't add him, but again - I hate to completely veto someone if you feel differentl
David Tennant - Scotland - yup
Chris O'Dowd (muppet) - Republic of Ireland - duh
Ioan Gruffudd - Wales - oh yeah. He's like, handsome in businessy way.
JOe Anderson - England - sure
Russell Brand - England - doi
Tom Mison - England - YES.
Y’all. “He’s like, handsome in a businessy way.” Has anything ever been more descriptive and accurate?
Because I know I can pull some people out of nowhere (although ultimately I would totally replace Andrew Garfield with Paul McGann any day), we are saying goodbye to Paul McGann, David Bowie, and Russell Brand (I second-though his haircare).
*****UPDATE*****
Guess what? I don’t know anything about brackets and it worked out in all of our favors. Turns out you need 32 teams minimum for a bracket. Haley and I made our bubble** picks, and here are six new additions:
- Matthew Lewis^
- Jonny Lee Miller
- Martin Freeman
- Marcus Mumford
- Matthew MacFadyen
- Paul McGann
So here we are, at the crossroads. Decision time. And we need your help! Please take part in our first ever THE RIGHT MANS Bracketology Challenge! Click on the image below to go to a site where you can help us narrow down the list to the Most Attractive (singular) British Man. It’s in your hands. We’re all depending on you***.
CLICK HERE TO VOTE: Round 1 voting is open through Monday, July 14 at 4:00pm CST. VOTE NOW!
(You should know I hate this bracket format with all my heart and will be updating to another platform before the end of round one :).)
*We actually ended up swapping in Ewan McGregor, which is another great accent, and freed us up for the LOVE, ACTUALLY battle of Lincoln vs. Firth. You read that right. Lincoln vs. Firth. Boom.
**Honorable mention to our bubble losers: Ben Wishaw, Russell Brand, and our trio of outlying-aged musicians: Tinie Tempeh, Ed Sheeran, and David Bowie
***J/K. Haley and I are doing a separate challenge, too, with some of the people mentioned in these posts. We’ll circle back around with those results.
^Credit to Erin Moon – I don’t know how we’d forgotten Neville. 100 points to her house.
Part three - with the first round of voting results - can be found here.
