Folks, "NYCFC Hair Madness" was rigged.
A bracket-based fan vote to decide who possessed the finest locks on the team, there was really only one final showdown worth pondering: Mix Diskerud versus Andrea Pirlo.
Mix. Liberated voluminousness, as if without effort.
Pirlo. A practiced elegance. Authoritative.
But alas, NYCFC's hair champion was not decided justly; the Maestro bounced Mix in the semifinals. Rigged!
Sure, the Miracle on Ice and the 2004 American League Championship Series both proved that a heady semifinal can upstage a subsequent final for the better. But to deny New York City's fans a proper climax in the finals, as the bracketed structure of NCAA March Madness gave us ever-so-thrillingly last week, is an instance of justice miscarried.
Why couldn't we have that?
Anyway, "Hair Madness" ended with Pirlo trouncing David Villa by a ratio of almost 50,000 to 1 (our estimation). But the vote was rigged from the start. I mean, how on earth was Mix not the number-one seed on Villa's half of the bracket?
We still have so far to go as a country. So, so far.