This is the first season of the Vitale Cup, so if you've missed the previous leaderboards I'll refresh you on the rules.
Don't get me wrong with the intent of this cup. I love Dick Vitale. I love anyone who is consistently enthusiastic about college basketball. It's the best sport there is, and Vitale will talk about it to anyone, at anytime, and do it with passion and enthusiasm.
That said, what he has to actually say about the game is questionable at times. At least I feel that way. And so to test that theory I devised a competition.
We're all college basketball experts, right? To show this, back in the fall, every site posted their preseason top-25 and discussed it as if it were meaningful. Then we all moved on to the next topics where we were experts.
Unfortunately (for some of those sites) and fortunately (if your name is Team Rankings) I bookmarked those top-25s for later use. The goal, in the spirit of Dick Vitale, is to award the worst college basketball prognosticator of each season.
It's a simple system. I compare each site's preseason top-25 to the current AP top-25, and see what's what.
Points are awarded for correctly placing top 25 teams in the preseason. Bonus points are awarded depending on how accurate within the standings those predictions were. Points are deducted for incorrect guesses, and further points are deducted for completely sucking. The low score wins.
Without any more of my yammering, here are the final standings:
| Midwest Sports Fans | 11 |
| CBS Sports | 13 |
| Yahoo! | 13 |
| Jon Rothstein | 13 |
| b/r | 15 |
| Mike DeCourcy | 16 |
| Sheridan Hoops | 16 |
| ESPN | 18 |
| Dick Vitale | 19 |
| NBC Sports | 19 |
| Rush the Court | 19 |
| Blue Ribbon | 20 |
| Run the Floor | 20 |
| SB Nation | 21 |
| Sports Illustrated | 24 |
| Team Rankings | 29 |
Congratulations to Midwest Sports Fans, and congratulations to Dick Vitale who beat eight of the contestants.
