Friends, we are all witnesses to history, and the Corenament now has something over the actual NCAA (men’s) Tournament — after the University of Virginia ate a big ol’ bag of shit against the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (it’s a commuter school!) last night, a 16 seed has now topped a #1 in the Big Dance.

Not even we can claim that kind of bonkers-ness; the closest that we got in the first round was ayumikurikamaki, a #13, adding insult to Babymetal’s enduring run of indignity (in the eyes of a clear majority of idol fans, at least). Excitement!

By and large, though, the Corenament has held pretty close to chalk. And that’s what early rounds are for — clearing out the noise and determining who really actually belongs to be in the competition for the title. Hence, after one full Corenament round, our field looks like this:

Pretty okay! And I think we’re still on track for all four Bracket Boss’s top seeds to meet up in the Sweet Sixteen. Which, frankly, is boring. So, with the nominal consent of said Bracket Bosses, I decided that it was time to roll out our first wrinkle. I call it … the 32 Switcheroo!

WHAT THE HELL! Actually, it’s pretty simple — I swapped bottom seeds from each region, is all. But now look at these matches! They’re incredibly random, and additionally … well, we’ll be down to one WACK act on Sunday night, ya feel?

We also managed to come up with a couple of other wrinkles:

• Beginning right now, each Boss gets to use one Resurrection Code: One defeated idol (period) can be brought back to life to replace somebody currently active in the field. And the best part it, is can be played AT LITERALLY ANY TIME!* The only downside is that you’re then stuck with them.
• Conversely, at any time*, a Boss can sub in Pour Lui — the issue being that she’ll retire as soon as the match is over, and then … well, if you’ve already used your one Resurrection Code, you’re kind of screwed. But the Bosses are game!

*Well, between rounds; technically, doing it in the middle of a round would be legal, and it would trigger a reset, but that’s not a very honorable move NOW IS IT?

Wrinkles are in; we’ll start to make the matches themselves more interesting after we finish clearing the chaff.

You have two hours left in Tokyo and you want to see both idols in each match, but they’re playing on different sides of town; who do you go see?

Open through Sunday, and then we’ll regroup next week and get ready for the cut-down from 16 to the Final Four!