Looking for a March Madness team to back, but barely even know who’s in the Tournament, either because you weren’t keeping up during the regular season, or because you actually know nothing whatsoever about basketball? That’s totally cool. Here’s at least one good non-basketball reason to cheer on each and every team, from the perennial heavies, to the guys who wouldn’t have even been on the bubble if the bubble hadn’t gotten so much fatter this year.



1. Lamar University Cardinals: One of Lamar’s trusty seniors is forward Charlie Harper. If you’re a fan of cunning Chuck Lorre double entendres, this is your squad!



2. Wichita State Shockers: The Shockers actually ARE a cunning Chuck Lorre double entendre.



3. Western Kentucky Hilltoppers: Their coach, Ray Harper, only got the job a few weeks ago, when he officially replaced the fired Ken McDonald. So, root for the ‘toppers if a) your boss sucks and you think you could do a better job, or b) you’re just totally over McDonalds.



(New Yorkers: Root for the 'toppers if you prefer Rays to McDonalds.)



4. South Dakota St Jackrabbits: They’re actually the first team ever in all of South Dakota to qualify for the Tournament – but they’re not just representing “The Mount Rushmore State”, they’re representing all the states that have so little going on, their state nickname is based on the one thing people actually know about them.



5. Harvard Crimson: They have an Asian guy! Oh, wait, he graduated. How about: You consider Harvard to be a bunch of “elitists”. A lot of people who aren’t you, but are professional sportswriters, think Harvard’s success is due to their lowering athlete academic standards, and possibly some straight-up recruiting violations. The better Harvard does at sports, the more scrutiny there’ll be, and the more scrutiny, the harder the NCAA sticks it to those arrogant Ivy League bastards. Go Crimson!



6. Saint Louis Billikens: Head coach Rick Majerus is so fat. That’s not a joke, he’s just really rotund, and jocular, so if you like big & jocular, there you go. Also one time he made a joke about seeing Ashley Judd at a Kentucky game and therefore not needing to order pay-per-view hotel smut after, so if you like big, jocular, and Ashley Judd being a substitute for television rather than being on television, boom.



(There’s an apocryphal – or apocrapful – story that Majerus once asked a manager for a towel, took a poop in it in front of the whole team, then handed it back to the manager. If you don’t think LBJ was demeaning enough when he legendarily forced aids to brief him while he dropped the kids off at the pool, then this seems like a pretty good reason to pull for the…what the hell is a Billiken?)



7. USF Bulls: Forward Augustus Gilchrist played AAU ball in the nation’s capitol, for the DC Assault. If you think it was stupid for the NBA’s Bullets to change their name to the Wizards just because Washington has an astronomical crime rate, ladies and gentlemen, your DC Assault!



8. Southern Miss Golden Eagles: Brett Favre went here. He used to get totally wasted on beers before football games, and now steadfastly refuses to support the athletic department unless it assures him that all current players on all sports teams get similarly, awesomely intoxicated. This is probably not true, but then again it probably is.



9. Mississippi Valley St. Delta Devils: Jerry Rice went here. Later in his career he was accused of getting happy endings at a massage parlor. Whether you’re into college basketball, or Julia Roberts movies, who doesn’t love a happy ending?



10. Iowa State Cyclones: Their coach is nicknamed The Mayor. Who doesn’t love foursquare?



11. Detroit Titans: 20 minutes into their first game, Detroit won’t just break for halftime. They’ll break for Halftime for America.



12. Colorado Buffaloes: They’ve got a forward/center named Shane Harris-Tunks, which in its own peculiar way might be an even better name than God Shammgod, aka, God Shamm-God. Even more inspiring, Harris-Tunks came to us from someplace called the Australian Institute of Sport, which is a much more honest way of saying “athlete factory” than “Oak Hill Academy”. Hooray hyphenated names. Hooray honesty.



13. Montana Grizzlies: Two great musicians went to school here: Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam, and Jim Messina of Loggins and Messina. Just kidding, it’s actually Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager – whose 2012 theme just happens to be “Even though we ain’t got money, I’m still in love with you honey…”



14. Vanderbilt Commodores: You’re white.



15. Virginia: You’re so white.



16. Notre Dame Fighting Irish: You’re so white, but not Protestant-white, or Mormon-white.



17. Florida State Seminoles: Instead of paying attention to the game, you can eagerly scour the stands for the next Jenn Sterger, or, if you’re a girl, the next Burt Reynolds. No? You don’t like Burt Reynolds? Not even in the lame-ass, mustache-free romantic comedy Starting Over, with Candice Bergen and Jill Clayburgh? Okay, fine, have fun scoping out the next Charlie Crist.



18. UNLV Running Rebels: Sophomore guard/forward Karam Marwan Mashour was born in Nazareth, Israel. You know who else was born in Nazareth? His parents, Ghada and Marwan Mashour. Good people, you’d like them.



19. California Golden Bears: Nobody knows why they were invited. You don’t know why you were invited. You two should hang out together and make fun of how lame everybody else at this party is.



20. Michigan State Spartans: Technically you want them to win, win, win, win, then lose in the Finals and riot again. Why? Because last time they rioted, some dude smashed in the window of a Taco Bell, and then made himself a taco.



21. Kansas Jayhawks: They’ve got a hot young shooter named Merv Lindsay on the team. Likely the only guy named Merv in the whole damned Tournament. You probably have an uncle named Merv though, a crazy SOB who back in the 70s had a CB radio even though he wasn’t a trucker, so he could tell the highway babes things like “This is MervDiggity22, what’s your position? Mine’s a 69, over”, and then grab the joint from your giggling dad. Guess what Merv Lindsay’s twitter handle is? MervDiggity22. There’s nothing more important than family.



22. Murray State Racers: They’ve got one of the best guards in the game, but who gives a donkey’s balls. What matters here is that when you put on your Wu Tang voice and say “Bill Groundhog Day Ghostbusting Ass Murray State”, everybody’s gonna die laughing.



23. Creighton Bluejays: Their star player is the coach’s son, so if you’re into the aforementioned family, blah blah blah. Here’s the real deal: one of their most notable alumni founded TD Ameritrade, the company that made you totally rich when you decided to trust its sober, dignified spokesperson (Law & Order’s Sam Waterston) over that stupid E-Trade baby.



24. Long Beach State: Their basketball team’s called the 49ers, but their baseball team’s called “The Dirtbags” – “thanks to their gritty play and determination”. Thanks to “The Beach”, now you too can pretend that’s why people call you “dirtbag”.



25. Lehigh Mountain Hawks: All you need to know is that they are called the Mountain Hawks. Cacaw!



26. St. Bonaventure Bonnies: Despite its religious roots, St. Bonaventure is super-progressive. For instance, the heightened social awareness brought about by Pearl Jam and “Grunge” convinced them to drop their potentially racist nickname, “The Brown Indian”, as early as 1992. Also, they finally elected a nun school president, Sister Margaret Carney OSF. Sisters are doing it for themselves.



27. Baylor Bears: The hardcore Southern Baptist school literally didn’t allow dancing of any kind until 1996, and now the basketball team’s in The Big Dance? Heartwarming much?



28. VCU Rams: Shaka Smart let me tell you what I wanna do, wanna love you, wanna hug you, wanna squeeze you too. Yes, a “headcoach Shaka Smart = Chaka Khan” reference was inevitable, but so is the sunrise – it doesn’t mean you don’t look forward to it.



29. Florida Gators: Tim Tebow! That guy is just great.



30. Vermont Catamounts: Root them on because you’ve skied there, or because you’ve smoked pot before, or because you’ve got a ginger fetish and fell in love with Taylor Coppenrath back in the mid-aughts – though if that’s the case, you don’t need this column to tell you why to root for Vermont, or any other team with a strapping young redhead.



31. St. Mary’s Gaels: Mahershalalhashbaz Ali went there, probably the only actor ever to have a name crazier than the craziest basketball-player name (Shane Harris-Tunks).



32. Norfolk State Spartans: This is their first time. Help them make it as special as your first time, when you realized that despite being very tall (all five Spartan starters are at least 6'5"), you were no match for a girl many described as “a Tiger in bed”. (Yes, the Spartans play the Missouri Tigers…in bed!).



33. Missouri Tigers: No one expected them to be this good, but they were at least supposed to be pretty good, and they are a major program. In other words, they’re the best kind of out-of-nowhere team as far as not getting your pride stomped on for stupidly pinning your hopes on them. Apparently they might have problems against taller teams, but probably not taller teams from Norfolk State. THEN AGAIN YOU NEVER KNOW AND THAT’S WHY THEY CALL IT MARCH MADNESS.



34. Louisville Cardinals: You love small-batch bourbon – how about that Pappy Van Winkle whateverthefuckyear? – but after hearing about his two vacated Final Fours, you sense that the University of Kentucky’s John Calipari is too big of a wrong-kind-of-dirtbag to deserve a title (you are correct).



35. Kentucky Wildcats: Oh, you love the wrong-kind-of-dirtbag? You like bad boys? Then John Calipari is your man! Unless former Temple coach John Chaney kills him first.



36. Syracuse Orange: They have the same team name as the Dutch, if you’re into soccer, and European racism.



37. Ohio State Buckeyes: If you’re really into literature you can base your support purely on the fact that the intimidating older brother from Philip Roth’s Goodbye Columbus played basketball for OSU, just like so many Jews have, in literature.



38. Belmont Bruins: They really represent everything March Madness is all about – a scrappy little school (5004 undergrads) still playing games while a vastly more storied program sharing the same mascot (UCLA) sits at home wondering how screwed it’s gonna be by this apparently huge story about its players’ rampant drug abuse. Plus if you’re the kind of person who worries about print being dead, you’ll be happy to know Belmont’s from the Atlantic Sun Conference, which is the only NCAA conference named after a newspaper.



39. New Mexico Lobos: Liberal? Radical even? Random Vermont City notwithstanding, Albuquerque is the most legitimately hippie city represented in the Tournament. They ain’t weaving no baskets down there, son. Which might actually spell trouble for the basketball team.



40. Memphis Tigers: You’ve been to Graceland, and found it surprisingly cooler than expected, and love telling people that.



41. Indiana Hoosiers: You’ve seen Hoosiers. Or the slightly less remembered but still very good Breaking Away, which is also set in Bloomington, but is about a group of scrappy locals – including a young Dennis Quaid and Jackie Earle Haley – winning IU’s “Little 500” bicycle race, putting it in the face of all the snobby IU students who cruelly call them “cutters”, because they work in a quarry like everyone who doesn’t go to college. The dad in this movie is also the dad in 16 Candles.



42. UConn Huskies: You are a selfish jerk (UConn won last year).



43. New Mexico State Aggies: Appreciate academics? And you’re a Canado-phile? Guard Hernst Laroche already has his Bachelor of Arts, and he’s Canadian, which you probably didn’t know even if you’re also from Canada. (Other Canucks in the tourney, not all of whom even Canada’s Globe and Mail knew about: Kris Joseph, Syracuse; Andrew Nicholson, St. Bonaventure; Robert Sacre & Kevin Pangos, Gonzaga; Brady Heslip, Baylor.)



44. Xavier Musketeers: You love comic books and/or sweeping French novels turned into movies starring Kiefer Sutherland and Lamar University’s Charlie Harper.



45. San Diego State: State Colleges named after cities are hilarious, and always will be. These guys are no Cleveland State, but they’ll do. Also, frustrated Mountain West Conference Player of the Year Jamaal Franklin got busted flipping the bird after a loss, then denied it – gotta love the stones on a guy who argues with a camera.



46. LIU Brooklyn: Along with CCNY, LIU was one of the schools that got decimated by the point-shaving scandal of the early 1950s, but you can forgive them for that, because Spike Lee has, and who are you to question Spike Lee. Spike’s tweet after their conference title win: “Big Congrats to LIU-Brooklyn Blackbirds For Defeating Robert Morris. Welcome to March Madness. Brooklyn GOES HARD.” (It doesn’t hurt that this would be an insanely fun thing for you to yell in bars.)



47. Davidson Wildcats: They don’t have a Stephen Curry’s Soulful Eyes/Stephen Curry’s Hot Mom for you to fall in love with this year, but sophomore Chris Czerapowicz is really fun to watch when he starts dunking in peoples’ faces with unexpected athleticism and then falling on the ground with expected athleticism. More to the point of this article, he’s Swedish, so his mom is almost definitely hot.



48. Colorado State Rams: “When Tim Miles came to Colorado State University to coach men’s basketball he arrived on campus with a winning attitude and a smile.” It’s true – you will find yourself looking at his smile thinking “Whatever truth this guy has found, I want a piece of it, though I don’t want to have to run gymnasium stairs to get it.” Also, the Rams play in Moby Arena. Imagine yourself singing “Here we are now, going to the West Bracket…” Oh, that’s where coach Tim Miles’ smile came from.



49. Marquette Golden Eagles: They’re from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They are, in fact, Milwaukee’s Best, assuming none of the other universities in Milwaukee are any good. Anyway, point is, they’re from the place that brews what you’ll be drinking, unless you’re drinking wine, in which case it’s too bad Stanford didn’t make it.



50. UNC-Asheville Bulldogs: Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog Synthesizer, taught at UNC-Asheville. Without him, popular music as we know it wouldn’t exist, and neither would unpopular music as we know it, especially Emerson Lake and Palmer.



51. Kansas State: [Editor’s Note: I went to graduate school with a guy who went to Kansas State. On the first day of school he showed up wearing really short cut-off jeans. His legs were perfectly hairless, and very muscular. Years later I asked him, “Why did you show up to graduate school wearing short-shorts that exposed your hairless, muscular legs?”, and he calmly said “Dude, I went to Kansas State”. The moral: root for Kansas State if you’re all for not feeling any shame whatsoever over the things in your past you have no control over; or if you’re all for jeans cut off well above the mid-point of your thigh.]



52. Ohio Bobcats: Junior Ivo Baltic’s parents escaped Bosnia with him when he was a kid. Nuff said.



53. Cincinnati Bearcats: You feel that graduating from college is overrated, even though you graduated from college. Is that a sweater-vest you’re wearing? Sweast?



54. Texas Longhorns: You went down to SXSW and had a great time, and now you owe it to the state to get behind what the Lone Star really cares about: digital marketing that utilizes homeless people. Just kidding. It’s sports.



55. Gonzaga Bulldogs: You haven’t absorbed any new information since the late 90s, when Gonzaga first started being not-terrible. If you’re still listening to Staind, why not root for the Zags?



56. West Virginia Mountaineers: Four words: Kevin Pittsnogle Wedding Pictures. Look it up and prepare to be enraptured.



57. Loyola (MD) Greyhounds: Dismayed by the foolishness of young athletes? Well 6'7" junior Erik Etherly is probably the most responsible guy in college basketball. Why? Because he actually keeps his Twitter account private. The only thing you’ll learn by visiting @TWO4ISBACK is that Twitter considers him similar to some E-40 fan who goes by “Kaptain Save A Hoe”.



58. North Carolina Tar Heels: “Harrison Barnes” is one of those Seinfeldian names that’s just really fun to say with a regally deep voice, while “James Michael McAdoo” is one of those names you can imagine Michael Buffer announcing in a movie about a hapless 14-year-old whose broken arm heals in such a fortuitous way that it propels him straight into the top ranks of a fictional sport called “boxing”.



59. Alabama Crimson Tide: The only other school to win NCAA titles in football and basketball in the same year was the rival Florida Gators. This is completely irrelevant to you, because you base all of your sports allegiance on your love of Steely Dan.



60. Temple Owls: As alluded to before, former coach John Chaney almost strangled Kentucky coach John Calipari at a press conference. Vote Temple if you like men who prefer to say what’s on their minds, with their hands.



61. Michigan Wolverines: Just be careful that your tendency to succumb to the majesty of a great fight song doesn’t one day have you joining some sort of fascist/communist workers party, or start reading books suggested by Zach de la Rocha.



62. Wisconsin Badgers: You are a schoolteacher who believes in the power of public protest. You are a reformed 1970s rioter who still believes in the power of public protest. You ate cheese at some point today, or plan on eating cheese at some point in the future. You are the fat guy from the Discount Double Check commercials. And once again, you are so very, very white.



63. Georgetown Hoyas: Looking for someone to finally stand up to China? The Hoyas already did, last summer, when a weird-ass brawl broke out during an exhibition game. Chinese players attempted to stomp on people, and some chairs got in on the action. Pretty hot stuff. You can quibble about responsibility all you want, but two things are for certain: the Hoyas continued their Shanghai tour undaunted, and Joe Biden’s teeth were left to smooth things over diplomatically.



64. NC State Wolfpack: Everybody’s picking them to upset SDSU. You’ve never met a bandwagon you didn’t want to jump on. Hey, how about that LCD Soundsystem?



65. Purdue Boilermakers: You’re a newshound, and your main man has always been Sam Donaldson. Longtime (1980-2005) Purdue coach Gene Cady is the Sam Donaldson of collegiate athletics. You could crack a walnut on his shiny receding hard-plastic head-covering unit.



66. Iona Gaels: You fancy a Celtic accent, but hate every movie Aahershalalhashbaz Ali has ever been in.



67. BYU Cougars: You admire celibacy even if you don’t practice it. Really you just admire dedication in any form.



68. Duke Blue Devils: Sorry, got nothing.