The road to a new Dozen champion is officially underway. Jeff D. Lowe sounded the alarm earlier in the day with four matches teed up to open the bracket, all pointing toward the title night on June 18th. If you've followed this show at all, you know Round 1 is where seeds mean nothing and grudges mean everything.
The updated card had 8-Grinders vs. 4-Ziti kicking things off, followed by 3-Minihane vs. 7-Chicago, then 6-Ponies vs. 2-Uptown Balls, with 1-Experts vs. 5-Markettes also on the docket. That's a brutal first day — Ziti is the perennial Final Four lock, the Experts are the top seed, and Minihane vs. Chicago has the kind of regional bite that travels.
Ziti's reputation got the on-air treatment early, with Jeff D. Lowe noting on the broadcast that Dave Portnoy shows up whenever they make the Final Four — which, per Lowe, has been every season since Season 2. Club Trillion and Nick Turani's deadpan "Huh" / "How bout that" reactions from the remote boxes captured exactly how everyone else in the building feels about that streak.
Ziti on set as Lowe lays out the Portnoy-Final-Four pattern, with Club Trillion and Turani reacting.
And then there are the questions themselves, which remain the show's secret weapon. A New Amsterdam Vodka bonus round during Grinders vs. Experts asked how many episodes of The Office aired before Ed Helms joined the cast — the kind of pop-culture knife fight that decides matches when the score is locked at 8-7.
The Ed Helms bonus round mid-match between Grinders and Experts.
Round 1 always thins the herd fast, and with the championship set for Thursday night, every match on the Round 1 board is essentially a season-defining swing. Catch up on whatever you missed — the bracket only gets meaner from here.