SPORTS BLOG OF THE YEAR TOURNAMENT WILDLY SUCCESSFUL

by Vent, Busted Coverage

"Great idea."

"Great execution."

"This totally sucks. You guys left me out of the tournament."

I've heard it all over the last two days. The comments, emails and controversy swirling around the 2007 Sports Blog of the Year tournament we published this week is creating a buzz in the blogging community.

Dan Shanoff calls the tourney a "brilliant idea." I've hung that email from a mirror since it's from a legend. But with success comes controversy.

Some baseball blog is accusing Sons of Sam Horn of voting fraud. It seems the SOSH crew is going to bat for 38 Pitches unlike anything ever seen in 64-blog tourneys.

Then we get some asshole complaining that more should have done to prevent such fraud.

Yeah, we'll get right on that, after sucking down eight beers and watching a college basketball game. If the NHL can't stop some ingenious punk from voting a scrub into the lead in All-Star voting, we're not stopping some guy in Boston who loves the Schill.

Schill fan will do whatevah it takes for the Tub of Chub to advance.

Moving on.

Our advanced scouts tell us EDSBS is an odds-on-favorite to make it to the Final Four. Swindle is on a role after landing the Sporting News gig with Mottram and his loyal fans in the south have little to do but surf the 'Net and vote on polls.

A sleeper could be Need4Sheed in the South bracket. Detroit fans are stuck on their asses for the rest of the winter and spend hours on the computer. With such a captive audience, 'Sheed could make a run at the Elite 8.

The 1st Rd. ends tonight. There is still time to save Epic Carnival from an early exit.