Mascot Bracketology

March Madness is my favorite time of year and the first day of the tournament is always my favorite day.  I love filling out brackets, but I love it even more when my bracket is busted by crazy awesome upsets!  This year I decided to let Aria in on the bracket fun and have her pick games according to her favorite part, the mascots.  At first, she had a hard time understanding she would be picking a lot of different mascots.  She wanted to pick just one winner.  She loved looking at the pictures of the crazy critters and eventually got the hang of picking between two options.  There were some definite trends in her bracket.  She was not a fan of anything where you could obviously tell it was a real person, like Notre Dame's leprechaun.  When picking between the Michigan State Spartan and the Valparaiso Crusader, she looked at them for a minute and said, "I don't like either of those."  So we picked that game according to colors.  I know the Duke Blue Devil won a game because it is my favorite team and Iowa State as her national champion is clearly a home state favorite.  If Herky were in the tourney, I wouldn't have needed to ask.  He would be the winner hands down.  The elite eight included four wildcats and four birds.  The four birds won to make it a flying Final Four.  I didn't realize she liked birds so much!  But when I think about it, she has met four mascots in her life.  Three of them are birds; Herky, Cy, Fred bird, and Mr. Shucks.  Now as we watch the games, she wants to know which mascot goes with the teams we are watching.  She watches and watches for just a glimpse of the mascot.  Even though it is for very different reasons, I love that she is enjoying the basketball madness right along with me!