As you’ve probably heard, March Madness / the NCAA tournament for college basketball is underway. It can be fun to fill out your bracket and see how well you predict who wins what games. But I don’t keep up with it enough to know all the teams, so some of it would be just a blind guess for me. But there is a similar-style bracket that I would know more about: Meat Madness.
Meat Madness has a tournament-style bracket of 32 contenders. There are 4 regions: the “Red” Meat Region, the Poultry Region, and Pork Region, and the Seafood Region. Not every meat fits exactly into those categories, but it’s close enough. There are no rules on how to vote — you can base your vote on flavor, cost, convenience, whatever. Personally, I think flavor trumps all other considerations.

The Pork Region is stacked! Bacon is favored (hence its #1 seed), but there’s some good challenges there. And in a way, it’s unfair to have steak be only one entry, because there are several different tasty varieties.
I didn’t create this (though I find myself wondering why I didn’t think of this first). Here’s the link to the original meat madness bracket so you can read their description of it, along with the comments to see how it played out. Ironically, ESPN came out with their own Meat Madness bracket a week after So Good did. ESPN’s has 64 seeds, but the article debates each one and tells you the winners without reader participation. Still, if you want to look at it, here’s the link.
I’d like to get a group of guys together to vote on this sometime to see what really does win. If that happens, I’ll let you know who wins. In the meantime, you can share your predictions with us in a comment. Who should win, and why?
Holiday Inn Express
I think it’s a good idea, but still lacking. You really can’t just lump meats together in some tournament without setting the style of cooking. It’d be like making March Madness about basketball, football and baseball.
I would like to see this divided up in to Grilled, BBQ, Traditional, and Mixed(stews, pasta and the like).
Also – only two fish in the seafood region? What game were these guys watching?
Thomas Wayne
I like the idea of the new brackets you mentioned, but grilling would probably win easily. BBQ might compete, but what can beat grilling? Maybe the entire bracket could be filled with grilled meats…
BTW, in the original meat madness bracket, my money is on bacon.
Pumped Up Reader
My top four food choices would be CRAB, STEAK, BACON, DUCK.
The winner is…..
STEAK!!!……wrapped in bacon.
😀
Thomas Wayne
At one of the links, I found this quote:
From burgers to breakfast, bacon is the Michael Jordan of meat: It makes everything around it better. ~ Paul Lukas