My people, this has been a really fun 3 weeks together. I love this time of year so much. Thank you all again for taking the time to read these dumb posts and vote in these oh so important brackets. With a couple of exceptions, this is by far the best I have done at seeding a tournament. A few upsets here and there but the high seeds have really shone this year.

We have our Regional Champions and are ready to move on to the Final 4! The Elite 8 saw nothing but blowouts. There were 7 or 8 jingles that I felt were head and shoulders above the rest and they showed out in the Regional Finals. We enter the Final 4 with four teams that I think most of us could have easily seen winning the whole thing from the beginning. But enough with my rambling…on to the scores!

The Final 4 voting begins now and voting will end Sunday April 2 at 5pm Central. Championship round begins on Monday. I can’t believe we are already almost through this year!

But first — Let’s get on to the results! Remember all “scores” are percentages from voting.

Elite 8

Restaurants Region

(2) Chili’s – “I Want My Baby Back” vs (8) Double Mint Gum – “Double Your Pleasure”

The Restaurants Region somewhat surprisingly lost their 1 seed in the Round of 32 to the 8 seed “Double Your Pleasure” who then went on quite a run. I was a little uncertain if the magic could continue against behemoth 2 seed Chili’s. I easily could have made “I Want My Baby Back” the 1 seed in this region but went with the big clown instead. As it is, Chili’s gets to the Final 4 on the back of a 84-16 shellacking of Double Mint Gum.

Companies Region

(1) Toys ‘R’ Us – “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” vs (11) Nair – “Who Wears Short Shorts?”

Companies Region 1 seed “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” was one of the first jingles that popped in my head when we started making this bracket. It’s such a massive cultural touchstone. It had only given up a total of 3 votes through the first three rounds of this tournament. They got a tougher test from our Cinderella 11 seed “Who Wears Short Shorts?” but ultimately our 1 seed moves on 74-26.

Drinks Region

(1) Folgers – “The Best Part of Waking Up” vs (6) Bud Light – “Real Men of Genius”

The Elite 8 of these tournaments feels like it always comes down to either amazingly close match-ups or just 4 blow-outs. We got the latter this year. In what turned out to be our closest game of the four, our fun 6 seed “Real Men of Genius” comes up short against the big 1 seed Folgers. The final on this “close” match-up was 68-32.

Foods Region

(1) Kit Kat – “Give Me a Break” vs (3) Pepto – “Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion…”

Our last match-up of the Regional Finals was maybe my favorite earworm 3 seed Pepto’s “Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion…” going up against one of my other favorites in 1 seed “Give Me a Break”. I couldn’t pick between these two. Y’all did not have the same problem as our final 1 seed moves on to the Semi-Finals as Kit Kat wins 79-21.

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That leaves us with our bracket looking like this:

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Final 4

Semi-Final #1

Semi-Final #2

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There we have it. After all these match-ups, Cinderella runs, and beatdowns we end up with three 1 seeds and a 2 seed as our Final 4. This has never happened before. We’ve never had at least a 4 seed or lower make the Final 4.

The Semi-Finals are all set y’all! Time to see who gets to the Championship. I honestly have no idea how y’all are going to go on either one of these match-ups. I can’t choose between with of them. These were the four biggest jingles in the group. Good luck. Let’s get to voting! See you guys on Monday for our Championship round!!!