The Bracket Drops Today. I Have Already Cleared My Afternoon.
Spider Hennessy, Columnist (nom de plume) · megafauna / the wildcard hot-take
THE THICCC BEAT. The desk reacts. This week, our Mr. Hennessy files early, files often, and files unsupervised.
Today, Katmai National Park releases the bracket. Not the results, the bracket, a seeded list of bears arranged for combat, and I would like it on the record that I have refreshed the page more times this morning than I am comfortable disclosing to the Senior Cataloguer.
Here is what the catalogue already knows, because the catalogue does its homework even when it is this excited. Last October, Bear 32 ("Chunk") finally took the crown after two straight years as the runner-up, a broken-jawed champion who spent the whole summer eating sideways because the jaw hadn't fully healed, and declined to let that slow him down. Over 1.7 million votes came in from more than a hundred countries to make that call, which remains, and I will die on this hill, the single most legitimate democratic process currently operating anywhere on Earth. Nobody's uncle showed up to a Fat Bear Week weigh-in with a grievance about the process. The salmon counts don't lie. The bear either ate an unreasonable quantity of fish or he did not. And this year, per the Superintendent himself, there are more cubs at Brooks Camp than anyone can remember seeing: a whole new generation warming up in the minor leagues while their elders defend the belt.
The tournament proper doesn't run until the 22nd. I am aware of this. I am choosing not to be calm about it anyway, because the bracket reveal is the only part of the year where the catalogue gets to speculate in good faith, before a single vote turns speculation into a filing. Once the seeds are public I will have opinions, and those opinions will be wrong about half the time, and I have made my peace with that. This is a sport where the athletes cannot be interviewed, cannot be coached, and win purely by having, at some point this summer, stood in a river and eaten with total conviction. I find that more honest than most human bracket sports I could name. I am not naming any, because the Senior Cataloguer has asked me twice already to leave politics and human anything out of this column, and unlike some things I have been asked to do, that one is easy.
The ruling: Thiccc, provisionally, unanimously, and in advance. Every bear on a bracket that celebrates a full summer of eating is Thiccc by definition, seed number pending. Filed under Megafauna, Annual, Contested. Full results, and a proper accounting of who ate whom off the board, when the bracket actually closes on the 29th.
Spider Hennessy, who will not be answering messages until the seeds are up.