A champion has finally been named.
Okay, if you're into semantics, Leo Moses Spornstarr was named twenty-some years ago. But as a commenter pointed out, there is no prior Spornstarr line, no Spornstarr family crest, no awkward yearly gatherings of Spornstarrs. Our champ is a thoroughly modern creature, the product of the commendably egalitarian but hopelessly naive union of a Sporn and a Starr.
On second thought, perhaps it's a mistake to conjecture that the portmanteau was an accident. Who are we to assume that Leo's folks are anything other than delightfully droll jokesters who jumped at their one-in-a-million onomastic opportunity? Who are we to rule out the possibility that the hyphen-free mashup was a well-intentioned parenting tactic, a contemporary Boy-Named-Sue situation? Who are we, dear reader, to dismiss the idea that Ms. Sporn and Mr. Starr had ambitions for their son's performance in this very tournament -- which has after all been around longer than he has? However it came about, our Leo may be the only Spornstarr in the world. The only Spornstarr in history, even. We don't know if he has siblings.
Let's recap: the 2-seed out of the Chrotchtangle Regional manhandled #15 Junior Lomomba and crushed #7 Carlton Crunk. He dispatched upstart 14-seed Ram Amandeep in the Sweet Sixteen without much fuss, proving that the best way to take down a bawdy name is with another bawdy name. He brought down the top-seeded Fancy English, Jr. in the Elite Eight. In the final four, Smokey Don Pipes of the Dragonwagon went up in flames. And as of last night, Leo secured his place in the history books by vanquishing Bulltron powerhouse Pornsak Pongthong. Here's to you, Leo.
(Sidenote: the one-point margin in the poll is artificially close; the actual differential is closer to 60 votes. Our analytics show that a lone rogue voter tried to inflate Pornsak's score after midnight but before I closed the poll. Improbably and miraculously, I noticed just in time, with one vote left before the scales tipped. Ugly crisis of second-guessing legitimacy averted -- but don't do that, people. Play fair: one vote per voter.)
Aside from that unsavory hiccup, thank you all for following along, voting, and making our first shift at the helm of the tourney a rousing success. We'll be back for March Madness in 2014. Name on.