March Madness has descended upon America, giving sports fans everywhere the chance to apply their basketball acumen to predict who will prevail in the frantic, single-elimination crucible of the NCAA tournament.
But where’s the fun in that?
If you are part of that vast group of Americans who eschew lame rules-based competition in favor of contests determined by finding the most people who agree with you, then The Daily Show with Trevor Noah’s Third Month Mania Bullshit tournament is for you.
The contest, consisting of 64 entries evenly divided between The Trump Conference and the Everything Else Conference, will ask voters to answer a simple question, best summed up by Noah himself:
“What bullshit was the bullshittiest bullshit of the last year?”
Indeed, there are a lot of good choices. On the Trump side, the president’s claims that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history, that rampant voter fraud cost him the popular vote, that President Obama tapped his Trump Tower phone lines, and that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the August rally in Charlottesville take the top seeds.
On the Everything Else side, the top seeds belonged to the shenanigans of radio and talk show host Sean Hannity, celebrity chef and cinnamon roll recipe-sender Mario Batali, “performance artist” Alex Jones, and NFL protester and Vice President Mike Pence.
But, as Daily Show correspondents Michael Kosta and Roy Wood Jr. noted in the video above, the wise may look deeper into the bracket for upset candidates.
“A really good bullshit-ologist likes to look at the lower seeds and find the Cinderella that could go all the way,” noted Kosta, pointing to Donald Trump’s claim that he didn’t get to watch much TV, “because of documents.”
Wood Jr., meanwhile, has his eye on a seven seed: Trump’s claim that no one says “merry Christmas” anymore. “It’s such bullshit, the human brain doesn’t even know what it’s supposed to do with it,” Wood Jr. said.
So what will win the honor of being the biggest bullshit of the year? Michael Phelps racing a CGI shark? Bitcoin? Tom Brady’s water prescription to prevent sunburn? Bow Wow’s fake private jet? Or will the president hoist the trophy* with his take on global warming? Or Russia? Or former FBI Director James Comey?
Round one voting has already begun.
*There is no trophy.