The Team Mullet Bowling League Quest for the “Cut” is Upon Us!

Alright there all you Mullebums and Mullebroads, the tournament is back, and this year’s gonna be better than ever. Because we have ten teams, it’s next to impossible to format a true head-to-head bracket. We think what we have come up with is actually a pretty decent revision, as there will be more teams eligible for the championship in week two than there have been in years’ past.

Use this in conjunction with the bracket posted on Z’s website, which can appear at first to be somewhat complicated. But it’s not, so follow along as we go:

If you need a sub, the sub must have an established handicap.

Week One

The top two teams at the end of the regular season will bowl each other. This will effectively be a bye week for them, but there will be a twist. Whichever of these teams has the most cumulative points for the entire season after they bowl will go into the next round as the #1 seed, the other will be #2. So as long as second is less than 7 points behind first, we’ll have some action on the match. If they end up tying, we’ll go to total pinfall on those three games only. And before the whining starts about how the points may not be accurate now Phil, rest assured that the Commissioner has every score for every game bowled by every person, and we will manually re-compute team points before the end of the last week in the regular season.

That said:

Third will bowl Tenth

Fourth will bowl Ninth

Fifth will bowl Eighth

Sixth will bowl Seventh

Sadly, all of the losers for these matches will be knocked out of title contention. But here’s the good part…all 4 winners of these head-to-heads will advance to the second round, where the donnybrook REALLY gets going.

Week Two

OK, buckle in! The two teams bowling for the league title will be determined this week, but will have to knock down more pins than two other teams to get there. That’s right, each match winner will be the team among the three with the highest handicapped series pinfall. Note that we are not simply taking the two highest series of the night, the bracketing is important, as you will see below. Before the complaining sets in, just realize that this gives more teams a shot at the “Cut,” and teams that lost the first week are still alive to take third.

That said:

The #1 seed will square off against the winner of 6-7 and either #4, #9, or #10. If #10 somehow gets through the first round (stranger things have happened), they fall into this bracket. If #10 loses but #9 wins, #9 in. This will only come into play if both #4 and #5 crap the bed the first week, but c’mon, that won’t happen, will it??? If #4 wins and #3 loses, #10 plays in this match, and #4 drops down to face #2.

The #2 seed will face both the winner of 5-8 and either #3, #4, or #9. It is impossible for #2 (or 5 and 8 for that matter) to play #10 in the second round, because if #10 wins the first week, they are seeded with #1. We figure this adds a little extra something for the team that established their superiority over the course of the entire season, which makes that match between first and second in week one so compelling.

The four losers from week one will bowl each other, with the winners still in contention for 3 rd, while the losers of these two matches can finish the year off no better than 9 th. Better bring it for these games too I guess.

Week Three

First, the obvious. The winner of the two teams that advance from the “Monster Brackets” will be your next league champ, and we will all bow down. The loser gets second.

The teams that lost in both weeks one and two determine who will be this year’s Savannah State. The loser of this match must apply to the committee for re-instatement next year.

That leaves us with SIX teams eligible for 3 rd place. And that distinction will go to the team that not only wins their match, but has more handicap pins that night than the other two winners. 4 th and 5 th will go to the winners in descending order of pinfall, and we will apply the same formula to the losers to determine 6 th-8 th.

See? Pretty simple. And filled with plenty of potential twists and turns. It’s already been a great season that has been leveled substantially by both good bowling and sizeable handicaps. It’s pretty clear that this year’s champ should be peaking at the right time, and must put three consecutive matches together to take the crown.

Best of luck to all,

The Commullemish