Selection Sunday Special: Cartilage Free Captain Best Article Bracket

A few days ago, we promised you that we’d look at ways to give you content on this website during the hiatus of Tottenham Hotspur....football....sports in general. We asked you for some ideas while we came up with some of our own, and we promise we’re going to do what we can to entertain you.

One of the ideas that came up in the Slack channel for CFC was a discussion about some of the best articles we’ve each written. What started as a generic conversation quickly turned into an idea to fill the gaping void that is March Madness. While I doubt it’s going to have the drama of a George Mason or VCU making it to the Final Four, this is a way to give you content while going as far back as 2012 to find articles you may not have been around for.

Some of the articles are in-depth analysis. Some are opinion pieces. Others are just plain parody. It will be up to you to determine which one is the best of all time. We’ve followed the same system that the NCAA uses: Four regions, sixteen articles in each. Seeding was done in the most non-scientific way possible (See: Dustin and I randomly assigning numbers after the first couple of seeds) so you all can talk about if something is higher or lower than it should be.

We’ll be highlighting individual matchups over the coming days, along with polls for you to vote. For now, here’s the full bracket!

Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?

(What about the Hoddle, I hear you shouting. We hear you. The best work of various Hoddles ranging from Pardeep to theroosevelts will be featured in its own side-bracket, coming soon. Don’t call it the NIT, it’s a way for us to emphasize this unique, special category of article.)

Tom Carroll Memorial Region

#1 Seed: Sex Drugs and Throughballs: Life on the Road with Tom Carroll - Skipjack
vs.
#16 Seed: Book Review: A People’s History of Tottenham Hotspur - Dustin

#8 Seed: The transcendent vision of Mesut Ozil - Michael Caley
vs.
#9 Seed: AZ Alkmaar boss denies second bid for Janssen - Dustin

#4 Seed: Introducing the Recurrently Generated Football League - Dustin
vs.
#13 Seed: An interview with a Qarabag FK supporter - Sean

#5 Seed: Postcards from the Ledge: On Beethoven and Tottenham - Dustin
vs.
#12 Seed: Transfer of Georges-Kevin N’Koudou from Marseille - Sean

#6 Seed: Introducing the Recurrently Generated Tottenham Hotspur - Sean
vs.
#11 Seed: Tactics Tuesday: Anatomy of a Goal, and a Season - brett rainbow

#3 Seed: Andros Townsend to Newcastle for £15m Purple Monkey Dishwasher - Michael Caley
vs.
#14 Seed: Fackenham FC: #AgainstModernFootball - Edward F.

#7 Seed: 17 Syllables: The Cicada - The Sleeper’s Sleep
vs.
#10 Seed: The Evolution of Mauricio Pochettino - Jake Meador

#2 Seed: Recapping Tottenham Hotspur’s Transfer Window - Ben Daniels
vs.
#15 Seed: The Transfer Window: A Tottenham Hotspur Text Adventure - Dustin

Row Z Region

#1 Seed: Don’t Let the Pigeon Sign with Chelsea - Dustin
vs.
#16 Seed: Why Spurs should keep their best young players at home - Edward F.

#8 Seed: The Transfer Target: the cautionary tale of Leandro Damiao - 55thVin
vs.
#9 Seed: The Death & Birth of Tottenham Hotspur, Part 1 - Kim McCauley

#4 Seed: Where in the World is Chairman Daniel Levy? - Ben Daniels
vs.
#13 Seed: Tottenham Hotspur are a hot mess, and everyone is to blame - Dustin

#5 Seed: Your team is getting relegated: Arsenal - Ben Daniels

vs.
#12 Seed: Teams that have made the Champions League quarterfinals ahead of Arsenal, ranked - Sean

#6 Seed: In appreciation of Erik Lamela, Tottenham’s do-everything attacker - Sean
vs.
#11 Seed: Good things are happening to Tottenham Hotspur, and here’s how to cope with it - Dustin

#3 Seed: How to talk to your kids about Dele Alli & Eric Dier - Skipjack
vs.
#14 Seed: How both AVB and Tim Sherwood failed Tottenham - Michael Caley

#7 Seed: Introducing the Tottenham Hotspur Clone League - Dustin
vs.
#10 Seed: Tactical Analysis: Breaking down Arsenal’s best goals this season - Ben Daniels

#2 Seed: 17 Syllables: “Dispatches from Bat Country” - The Sleeper’s Sleep
vs.
#15 Seed: Watch: Saluting our Troopz, An ode to an Arsenal Fan TV legend - Alex Greenberg

Redknapp Region

#1 Seed: Recurrently Generated Football League: Clood - Ben Daniels
vs.
#16 Seed: Watch Erik Lamela score a rabona goal in the Europa League - Kim McCauley

#8 Seed: CFC Poetry Slam 9: An Ode to Harry - Dustin
vs.
#9 Seed: An Open Letter from Cain Hoy - Skipjack

#4 Seed: Signing Serge Aurier would be an insult to Tottenham fans - Ben Daniels and Michael Caley
vs.
#13 Seed: Discovering Home - 55thVin

#5 Seed: We Are in Fourth Place! An Arsenal Parody - Dustin
vs.
#12 Seed: Player Ratings to the Theme of Bears - Dustin

#6 Seed: On Rumi, Letting Go, and Tottenham - Dustin
vs.
#11 Seed: All 20 Premier League clubs represented by Dril tweets - Dustin & The Sleeper’s Sleep

#3 Seed: Tottenham Hotspur’s new kit reveals the rot at the heart of the club - Skipjack
vs.
#14 Seed: Believing in Tottenham is never wrong: a not-retraction - Avery Farmer

#7 Seed: The Argument Against Joao Moutinho in Chinese - Ben Daniels
vs.
#10 Seed: The Spartacus Question - The Sleeper’s Sleep

#2 Seed: Tottenham 1-0 Cardiff: Computer-generated player ratings - Dustin
vs.
#15 Seed: Chris Hughton to reunite with long lost Livermore? - Ben Daniels

Chirpy Region

#1 Seed: All Sports for All People: How Fabrice Muamba Reminded Us Why Sports Are Important - Dominic Wood
vs.
#16 Seed: Kevin Wimmer missed Spurs’ match against Juventus with “a black eye” - Pardeep Cattry

#8 Seed: An Open Letter to Jose Mourinho - Sean
vs.
#9 Seed: Spurs are our religion, and White Hart Lane was our holy place - Alex Greenberg

#4 Seed: Player Ratings to the theme of short werewolves - CFC Staff
vs.
#13 Seed: Player Ratings to the theme of people in the background of this Dele photo - CFC Staff

#5 Seed: Finding Joy in Mudville - Ben Daniels
vs.
#12 Seed: The Unbearable Smugness of being Liverpool - Ben Daniels

#6 Seed: Spurs are title contenders: The Air Raid - Joel Wertheimer
vs.
#11 Seed: Why starting Ryan Mason is bad for Tottenham Hotspur - Bryan A.

#3 Seed: What went wrong at Tottenham Hotspur? - Skipjack
vs.
#14 Seed: How to beat Tottenham Hotspur with this one weird trick! - brett rainbow

#7 Seed: Indefinite Articles: fixing the bad grammar of Tottenham’s striker search - The Sleeper’s Sleep
vs.
#10 Seed: Let’s talk about expected goals - Michael Caley

#2 Seed: A Christmas Tom Carroll, Part 1 - Skipjack
vs.
#15 Seed: Your team is getting relegated: Manchester City - 55thVin

This was an amazing trip down memory lane for a lot of us. I’ve been posting on Cartilage Free Captain since 2013 and forgot a lot of the older pieces. There was a time that Cartilage Free Captain was just a handful of guys creating content and nobody around to read it other than each other. It’s now one of the most active sites across SB Nation’s soccer community, and we’re proud of that.

Voting will begin some time this week. We’ll post each region’s first round individually and keep going from there until we have a champion.