They say this is the year to go crazy with your picks.

Six teams held the No. 1 spot this year, one off the record for most changes in a season. Every time a team seemed poised to make a run, they'd crash and burn in a national TV game, or be upset at home by a no-name school. So everyone keeps guaranteeing that this is the year for true madness, where up is left and down is right and Dick Vitale explodes in a puff of enthusiastic confetti.

Of course, everyone says that, and then they pick maybe a 13-seed in the first round, or a 4-seed beating a 1-seed, then call it a day. Everyone's too scared to really make the leap and pick a truly insane bracket.

Well, maybe not everyone.

This bracket is chosen entirely by a random qualifier: team nickname. With each matchup, I compare the two teams' chosen nicknames* as if they are real entities, decide which one would win in a fight, and advance that team to the next round.

*We're talking about nicknames, not mascots. Could the guy in the Notre Dame costume defeat the sleepy Gonzaga bulldog in a no-holds-barred, death-is-the-only-escape cage match? Let's not pause to imagine it.  

There are worse ways to do this, really. Let's begin.