And the winner is ...

 Oh, come on. You know the Blob doesn't do that on the day after Selection Sunday.

(Although congrats to Indiana for securing its expected 4-seed, and to Purdue for getting the 1-seed in the East Regional and completing the Big Ten double by winning the Big Ten Tournament for the first time since 2009.)

(Which does not mean the Boilermakers aren't perhaps the worst team in America against the press. They are. Good lord, folks, you NEVER go to the corner against the press. They teach you that in Indiana two seconds after you exit the womb.)

Where were we again?

Oh, yeah. Selection Sunday. 

On the occasion of which the Blob celebrates the little guys, the teensy guys, the guys who hardly ever get out of their first or second game alive. They're what make Da Tournament, because sometimes they go off script and beat, I don't know, Duke or someone, and that's what makes this first weekend the best weekend. You say Kansas won last year? Who cares?

It was little St. Peter's that was the star of the 2022 Madness, armed with a great nickname -- Peacocks -- and moxie, lots and lots of moxie. They beat Kentucky! They beat Purdue! They got all the way to the Elite Eight!

And so I'm looking through the brackets now, and even though the Peacocks didn't make it this year, I'm pleased to see Vermont did. This is because I have good friends who live in Vermont, and also because they're the Catamounts, which  is cool because hardly anyone seems to know what a Catamount is.

(It's a sort of mountain lion. Only with a splendidly Vermont-y name.)

I also see Kennesaw State is in there, and Florida Atlantic -- watch out for the Owls, my good friend Jim Saturday says -- and Fairleigh Dickinson. Whom you have to root for simply because it's frequently subjected to sophomoric nicknames like Fairly Ridiculous. 

But the team I'm rooting for this year?

Howard University.

Of course, the Howards (actual nickname: the Bison) would almost have to be the Blob's team. This is because the Blob is a Civil War nerd from way back. And so it's all in for Howard because its founder and namesake was a Union general named Oliver Otis Howard.

Howard commanded the Eleventh Corps in the Army of the Potomac, which got a bad rap because of that unfortunate business at Chancellorsville. That's where Stonewall Jackson routed it with his famous flank march that stupid Dan Sickles mistook for a retreat and so no one warned the Eleventh Corps, although plenty of Eleventh Corps soldiers tried to warn everyone else.

Anyway ... Howard turned out to be a damn good corps commander despite all that. And after the war, as head of the Freedman's Bureau, he founded Howard University in 1867, which today has some 12,000 students and is one of the most prestigious Historic Black Colleges And Universities (HBCU) in America.

Lots of people you've heard of have graduated from there, among them the current Vice-President of the United States, Kamala Harris. Also Thurgood Marshall and Andrew Young and former New York mayor David Dinkins. Also a pile of senators and congressmen, and a handful of governors, and famed author Toni Morrison, and the late actor Chadwick Boseman.

And the basketball team?

Well, it punched its ticket by beating Norfolk State by one point in the championship game of the MEAC tournament. The Bison hadn't gotten past the semifinal round of the conference tournament in 21 years. And the last time it was in the NCAA Tournament was 31 years ago, in 1992, when George Bush the First was president and Keith Richards was only 195 years old.

The Bison are led by two-time All-MEAC guard Elijah Hawkins, senior guard Khalil Robinson and the splendidly named freshman Shy Odom, the MEAC Rookie of the Year. They play Kansas in the first round, so they'll probably lose by a bunch, but, hey, you never know. Teams with veteran guards tend to do well in Da Tournament, and the Bison have veteran guards.

So, go Bison. General Howard is rooting for you.

He's also saying "(Bleep) Chancellorsville." But that's another Blob for another day.