Lessons from the Meat Bracket
23 Mar
Paul Lukas's Tournament of Meat
Thanks to Eric for sending this gem from sportswriter Paul Lukas, who has been kind enough to put together a NCAA-style tournament bracket . . . of meat.
It’s a great piece, but in light of Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir’s recent book THE ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGIST it also brings up an interesting issue in terms of competitive works.
Personally, I expected a nod to Reiter and Sandomir’s book in the end note, even though I know it’s not customary for the author of an article to pimp someone else’s work. [ed. note: See below for an IMPORTANT UPDATE on this paragraph.]
Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the mock bracket (like the mockumentary or fake news) isn’t ownable. It’s an obscure form, but it’s still a form. As such, it belongs to everyone and what matters is what you do with it.
Judging from the comments so far, no one seems to care. They are simply enjoying arguing about meat and making jokes about vegetarianism.
Perhaps that is the ultimate lesson. Only a portion of your audience cares about the provenance of your work. The question then becomes whether or not that part of your audience is
1. Large
2. Influential
3. Important to your personally for whatever reason.
Final thought: I’m not in any way calling Lukas out. I’m a huge fan of his work and find him thoughtful, funny and original. Lukas’s Uniwatch blog is a model for spinning obsession into gold. Study it well.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
If you click on the comments you’ll see a note from Paul Lukas, who contacted me to inform me that he was unfamiliar with THE ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGIST.
Upon reviewing my post, I realized that I had unfairly assumed that Lukas was aware of the book and that, despite my disclaimer, I was sounding accusatory.
The original paragraph read that I “would have appreciated” a mention of the TEB. I have since changed that to “expected.” I also removed an aside about how it wouldn’t have killed Lukas or ESPN to mention the book. That wasn’t fair.
In short, apologies to Lukas. As I mentioned in an e-mail to him, if I were doing this piece for a magazine I would have called him to find out what he did or didn’t know. Just because this is the Internet doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have similar standards.
