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The end of the baseball season means the start of the reflection/preview period for most college sports communities in America, but here it means something else: the time to decide which person, place or thing was the least cool over the course of the past athletic season.
A CC tradition unlike any other, the least cool person tournament is back and now officially accepting nominations.
A few things to address before we get this ball rolling...
Past Champions
For the unfamiliar, here's the group of chotches this year's champion will be joining:
2007-08: Larry Taylor
2008-09: Mitch Barnhart
2009-10: Steve Kragthorpe
2010-11: Brandon Bender
2011-12: Doug Gottlieb
Format
For the past two years, the format has been an unseeded, 16-entity tournament. Given the overwhelmingly cool nature of this past sports season, however, I think it's going to be difficult to find more than eight truly worthy nominees. If I'm proven wrong, we'll keep it at 16.
Who Can Be Nominated?
Remember that despite the name of the tournament, the participants don't have to be actual people. Recent years have seen the field comprised of things like Central Florida and the John Wall Dance. Also, past champions and participants can absolutely be nominated.
Storylines
I think there are three major storylines as we head into this year's tournament.
1) Will Doug Gottlieb even make the field just a year after pulling off the narrowest championship victory of all-time?
2) Can John Calipari make it to the title match and lose for a fourth straight year?
3) Will this be "the year of the doubting commentator" as many have predicted?
With all that out of the way, I will kick things off with the traditional first nomination by nominating Digger Phelps for the tournament.
Feel free to share your nominee or nominees in the comments section. The field for this year's tournament will be announced on Monday and the tournament will begin shortly after.