Making the Brackets For Musicians

A LOCAL RADIO SPORTS TALK HOST likes to augment his show with a little unsporting fun, so he set up a tournament in which country-western artists compete fot the ultimate prize. Its a sixty four draw with four groups of sixteen, like the NCAA big basketball dance. His one seeds were, I believe, Johnny Cash, W. Jennings, one of the Williams guys, and...I forge who else. Merle, possibly? Folks voted on each "game" by using Twitter or Facebook, of course. Maybe a few phone calls thrown in. They're down to the sweet sixteen, and Johnny Cash, the number one overall seed, seems destined to take down Patsy Cline, no easy endeavor. Its beginning to shape up as a final four including Cash and Jennings, assuming that Waylon can get by Willie Nelson, always a tough out. Johnny is the odds on favorite, according to exhaustive analysis, his "Ring of Fire" being his "ace in the hole". I propose a tournament of classical composers. The one seeds would be Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Brahams, an "all Germanic" seeding, with either Ludwing or Wolfgang assuming the one overall seed, take your pick. Tchaikovsky would be a strong number two, as might Mendelsohn, say, and Ravel, Debussy, but Schuman and Schubert must receive consideration. Thevoting would again take place on social media,, and would have the unintended consequence of bringing at least a modicum of cultural quality to the social media realm, much needed in our execrable era in which half the internet is pornography and the social media, all one trillion of the platforms, are more than replete with insults, savagery, and nonsense.