The NCAA men’s basketball tournament starts tonight with the play-in game between Arkansas Pine Bluff and Winthrop, and The Daily Reveille is getting involved in the madness.This year readers can turn in completed brackets for a chance to win a year’s supply of vitaminwater.To spice things up, we asked ourselves an important question: What goes well with basketball?Beer.Today marks the start of “Malt Madness” on lsureveille.com — a tournament of beers in which you can decide the champion.You can visit the Web site each day for the next two and a half weeks to vote for who will advance to the next round.”Malt Madness,” like the basketball tournament, is separated into four regions: “ales,” “lagers,” “pilsners” and “others.”The “Ales” region will tip things off today with eight first-round matchups, followed by the “Pilsners” Wednesday, the “Others” Thursday and the “Lagers” this weekend.The ales’ and pilsners’ second-round matchups will play out with online voting Monday, March 22, followed by the lagers’ and others’ second-round battles the next day.The Sweet 16 voting will be held Wednesday, March 24, and Thursday, March 25, and all four Elite Eight matchups will be during the following weekend of March 26 through March 28.Your votes on Monday, March 29, will decide the two Final Four games, and the national championship voting will take place for two days (Tuesday, March 30, and Wednesday, March 31) just in time to announce the winning beer Thursday, April 1, in The Daily Reveille’s final print edition before Spring Break and the NCAA tournament championship game.While you’re watching your favorite team wipe the floor with the competition, stop to examine the subtle differences between the brews in which you’re indulging.Visit lsureveille.com each day and help your favorite beers fend off elimination and advance to glory.—-Contact the Editorial Board at [email protected].
Our View: Malt madness provides a different kind of competition
March 15, 2010