The whole international pandemic thing that’s going down forced the 2020 March Madness to be cancelled. Or so you thought.

The NCAA is skipping this year’s tournament at all levels, but /r/CollegeBasketball has sponsored its own alternative Men’s Division I tournament: Reddit March Madness. Streamed exclusively on YouTube and executed with a college basketball video game from almost 15 years ago, this year’s March Madness is sure to be unpredictable and full of really dumb turnovers.

Nothing But Nylon is providing the exclusive* coverage of the event from the bedroom of our headquarters. Don’t miss any of the real* quotes and bone-breaking analysis that you’ll only find here because of how exclusive* this content is.

* = this means you can’t sue me

BYU, Tom Riddle Accused of Coordinating Tournament Delay

BYU played No. 13 seed Vermont in the second round of Reddit March Madness on Thursday night, the only basketball game on in the entire world. The Cougars won, 83-73, as Jake Toolson went off for 31 and the Catamounts couldn’t find the same success they had in their first game against Louisville.

It wasn’t supposed to be the only game that day as three others were set to tip on that date. But a “scratched disc” issue forced those games to be rescheduled and spread out among the next three days. That gave BYU an international spotlight.

Since, the problem has expanded. The rest of the second round has been pushed back to Thursday, April 2, after complications with tournament director /u/JaniSWFC’s PlayStation 3.

“Unfortunately, PS3 emulation is still not stable enough in 2020 to run a tournament on and we will have to postpone the second round of the tournament until next Thursday, April 2,” he said in an official Reddit post.

This means that while the other 15 teams that will advance to the Sweet 16 will only have only a handful of days to prepare for their next opponent while BYU will have been idle for approximately two weeks at that point.

This also offers BYU an opportunity to spend plenty of time scouting its potential opponents in the next round – Kansas and Saint Mary’s – while those teams are still occupied with each other. Kansas head coach Bill Self and Saint Mary’s head coach Randy Bennett have shared barbs with one another over the last several days, and that didn’t stop Sunday.

While there is to be no coming together against a common enemy, Self acknowledged the advantage Riddle and BYU have gained.

“I still don’t trust Australians, so don’t bother asking me if I’m going to have some kind of Kumbaya moment with Randy the Ringworm,” Self said. “But yeah, BYU is gaining an advantage from this. Of course. That’s how it always goes. The world is always against the little guy. That’s fine, Kansas likes it that way. We like having our backs against the wall. That’s when we spend the wisest.”

Bennett shared a similar message.

“Self bad,” he grunted, using both hands to smash various meats into his mouth and surrounding parts of his face. “Tom Riddle worse. Tom Riddle evil. Randy smash! Jordan Ford score 50!”

There have been rumblings that BYU head coach Tom Riddle could have something to do with it. The coach has a reputation for meddling in national and global affairs in a malevolent way, like when he possessed Ginny Weasley and used her to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, and the motive seems apparent.

I approached Riddle with these allegations, and he told me that the muggles were behind this.

“Only muggles would let a scratched disc get in their way,” he said. “A wizard would just wave their wand and, poof, fixed disc. I mean, come on people, they’re obviously inferior. Why are we relying on them for anything?”

While he makes a good point, Riddle has exposed a good deal of anti-muggle rhetoric over the years, including calls for violence and genocide, something his detractors have heavily criticized. BYU administration has brushed off his statements as “political opinions that we’re all entitled to,” but the latest situation has some calling for an investigation.

“For how long will muggles have to deal with haters like The Dark Lord actively working to put us down?” said Brad Franks, president of the American Muggles Association, an organization fighting for muggles rights in the United States. “As if not having magic powers was bad enough. You don’t have to rub it in. That’s just needlessly rude.”

I was able to get in contact with a member of the BYU athletics department who had inside information on the situation. He asked to speak anonymously for fear of his life, choosing to use the alias Deep Stroke as an allusion to BYU’s three-point shooting and nothing else.

“I can’t tell you everything, but I can tell you that Tom Riddle’s hands are not clean,” Deep Stroke said. “The tournament director, /u/JaniSWFC, doesn’t have anything to do with this. He’s merely a pawn. The disc really is scratched. But why is it scratched? Who scratched it? These are the questions you have to answer.”

Be sure to follow along with Nothing But Nylon’s comprehensively exclusive* coverage of the 2020 Reddit March Madness.

Part of the proceeds from the sale of each #RedditMarchMadness t-shirt will go toward helping those in the basketball community affected by COVID-19. We will be partnering with non-profits like the Give and Go Foundation on the effort. If you know of a worthy group that could use some extra funds, please reach out.