Most Dominant College Mascot on Earth: First Round

What have you watched on TV this week?

When I'm not watching either the Miami Heat or Florida Marlins, I'm catching up on Lost, The Sopranos, Simpsons reruns, The Office, Jericho, How I Met Your Mother and anything on the History, National Geographic and Science channels. Yeah, I'm a TV junkie. But none of these shows have anything on the Discovery Channel's Planet Earth mini-series.

For those of you who don't spend too much time on the great wasteland known as television, Planet Earth is an 11-part mini-series on the Discovery and Science channels that covers our world's diverse ecosystems. Footage from caves, shallow and deep seas, forests and jungles took years to capture, edit and present to general audiences.

Calling it your average, run-of-the-mill nature show would be criminal. Don't even get me started on the high-definition version. Guys, if you purchased a very expensive LCD or plasma HDTV in the past few weeks and the significant other is miffed, have her watch this in HD. It will be a good justification for your (understandable) impulse buy.

So it got us thinking here at SPiN. We sorely miss filling in brackets and making wild predictions about which college teams will beat whom, so we formed this tournament. Inspired by Planet Earth, we wanted to know what is the most dominant collegiate mascot in existence. So we took a look at every Division I football and basketball team and divided them up into four regions: predators, humans, inanimates/mythological creatures and land animals.

The tournament is very simple. I'm sure this is something we've all been arguing about since grammar school -- can a bear beat a bird? What about a pirate vs. a lumberjack? Did you ever consider a tidal wave vs. a rocket? This contest is meant to be very lighthearted. So I better not see any threads in the message board, or receive e-mails that read, "The Bulldog football team rulz! There's NO WAY it'll lose against the Wolverines!" Don't be dumb. Have fun, and think back to when you were in your elementary school lunch room, arguing with your chums about the Flash vs. Superman.

First-round results and quarterfinal regional matchups will commence on Friday, April 27.

Also, check out the SPiN on Sports group on Facebook. We want to be your friend.