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That headline is kind of a lie. I'll explain in a second. Pinky swear.
We're in that weird period of the year when it's not quite the offseason (people are running around with sticks and stuff) but it's not quite the, you know, season (people are mostly running for the sake of running). It's kind of like purgatory but without all that icky religious guilt and such. So, what do we do?
Dance party.
The problem with having a dance party, though, is that you really can't have an actual dance party on the Internet. I mean, you can, but that's awkward and weird and if you try that sort of thing you should reasses your social life. Instead, we're going to have something like a dance party but it doesn't involve shaking your moneymaker: We're going to have a tournament to determine the best college lacrosse team of the NCAA Tournament era. I'll give you a second to change your underpants.
Good? Great. Here we go.
It's going to be a 16-team showdown, seeded throughout and you'll be able to vote on the winners of individual matchups. Again, we're limiting this to the NCAA Tournament era, so it's just teams from 1971-2012. Sorry, Hopkins teams that smacked around fools from the early 20th century; you're not eligible (or remotely close to living). At the end we'll crown a champion and nothing substantive will happen. It's kind of like simulated war games but different in that we're not simulating the loss of life, there's no evasive maneuvers, and this exercise involves lacrosse teams that will never play each other because this is totally imaginary. So, yeah; that's a perfect analogy.
I'm going to throw out 16 teams that I think were the best of the last 40 years of college lacrosse. You'll have the weekend to make a case for the addition or removal of a team or teams. The comments are your ballots for creating the field; make a decent argument and -- viola! -- you're instantly Internet famous and your team may find inclusion in the tournament. I should also note (as Facebook made abundantly clear earlier in the week): This may be a coronation, but, uh, let's try to make this a thing anyway.
Here are my 16 suggestions (ordered by year that they competed):
1973 Maryland | 1976 Cornell | 1977 Cornell | 1979 Johns Hopkins |
1981 Johns Hopkins | 1981 North Carolina | 1982 North Carolina | 1984 Johns Hopkins |
1984 Syracuse | 1988 Syracuse | 1990 Syracuse | 1991 North Carolina |
1996 Princeton | 1997 Princeton | 2005 Johns Hopkins | 2006 Virginia |
I'm looking at a bunch of factors here: Whether a team won the national championship; the team's record that season; how the team won their games; All-Americas and Hall of Fame members on the roster/coaching staff; etc. You should do the same with your recommendations (although I'm sure this is going to devolve to "'90 'CUSE, BRO!").
We'll light this candle on Monday. Start making the Google machine do Google things.