Culture
The funniest 2025 March Madness bracket names: Picking our favorites
There’s not too much shame in a botched March Madness bracket. The NCAA Tournament is compressed chaos in single elimination, upsets are part of the game, and only one entrant can actually win it all.
What we can’t forgive is a lazy, uninspired bracket name.
The men’s and women’s tournaments give us a wealth of punnable school, player and coach names to choose from — even an arena or two. Here are this correspondent’s favorite puns and frivolities for 2025 bracket names. Give us yours in the comments below.
Men’s
Ok, Broomer — For those who see Auburn as an inevitability, go with their star, Johni Broome. These are not your postwar Tigers.
Green Flaggs — A lot of folks will swipe right on the Blue Devils if their megastar Cooper Flagg is healthy.
Lipsey’s Hustle — The marathon continues for Tamin Lipsey, Iowa State and the Fightin’ Otzelbergers.
Knuck If You Buzz — Texas A&M head coach Buzz Williams has the sheer intensity and righteous passion of prime Lil Scrappy.
Let’s Get Oweh From It All — To Kentucky’s Otega Oweh: “Let’s take a boat to Bermuda, let’s take a plane to Lexington.”
Yes, UConn — For the Huskies believers.
No, UConn’t — For people who actually watched UConn this season.
Creighton for a Star to Fall — The name whispered on the wind was, in fact, “Ryan Kalkbrenner.”
Caleb Love and Basketball — For what? Our hearts, of course. And an Arizona run.
Caleb Grillz — Missouri bucket-getter Caleb Grill has his whole top diamond and the bottom row gold … we think.
Littlejohn and the Eastside Boyz — Chase Hunter and Clemson have forced their tourney seeding to Get Low. Looking to bring some hardware back to Littlejohn Coliseum.
Frankie Fidler on the Roof — To life, to life, to Sparty. Tevye would’ve trusted Michigan State’s Tom Izzo in March.
Love (Ma)shack — It’s a lil’ old place where we can get together … and make Alabama really upset. Tennessee’s Jahmai Mashack had one of the coolest moments of this college season.
LJ Cryer and the Infinite Sadness — A [Houston] Cougar with Butterfly Wings. Underestimate whatever that is at your own peril.
Queen’s Gambit — Maryland’s freshman center Derik Queen is the tallest, fleetest turtle we’ve ever seen.
Kameron Presents…the (Golden) Diplomats — Based on Marquette’s guard Kameron Jones. Does that make David Joplin Juelz Santana?
Silkk Da Shaka — Another great Marquette play.
Toppin My Collar — For those both appreciating Texas Tech’s resurgence (and star JT Toppin) and wishing it was 2005 again.
“What Are You Doing in My Swamp?!”— The Florida Gators would win and cover against Lord Farquaad.
Rick Pitino’s Bodega Corner — The Johnnies have taken New York by (red) storm.
Throw it Down, Big Man —For those wanting to honor the late Bill Walton.
One Shining Moment — For those wanting to honor the late Greg Gumbel.
Grant Nelson’s Mustache — In celebration of the sport’s modern canon.
The Parentheses Preferers — Who needs brackets? Proper punctuation prevents poor performance.
Tar Heels and Glass Slippers — Maybe, just maybe, there’s someone out there who has UNC making a Cinderella turn.
The Floor Slappers Federation — Yup, it’s about that time.
Women’s
Elementary, My Dear Watkins — For those who fashion JuJu Watkins and the Trojans as “A Study in Scarlet.”
JuJu Fruit — We’re sweet on JuJu and USC.
For Bueckers or Worse — Paige Bueckers is the superstar, but Sarah Strong and Azzi Fudd also balled out this year.
For Auriemma, Forever Ago — Do we think UConn’s iconic coach, Geno Auriemma, knows who or what Bon Iver is?
Place Your Betts — UCLA and Lauren Betts could certainly cash out after their inspired Big Ten tourney performance.
Dawn and On — South Carolina and Dawn Staley pursue their fourth national title of this era. We’ll take every opportunity to hear more Erykah Badu.
Boom Boom Paopao — The WNBA-bound Gamecock Te-Hina Paopao is so 3008.
The Van, The Lith, The Legend — TCU’s superstar Hailey Van Lith just put in work as the MVP of the Big 12 Tournament.
Hidalgo To Bed — Don’t sleep on Notre Dame (or Hannah Hidalgo) despite the late-season slump.
Came Out a Beast — Flau’jae Johnson is nice on the boards and in the booth.
Taylor Jones’ Block Party — Everyone’s invited. Texas is tough in the frontcourt.
Wes is Moore — A guiding mantra. NC State’s sideline strategist Wes Moore is the ACC’s Coach of the Year.
Lawson’s Creek — For those switching over to Duke (coached by Kara Lawson) after their conference tournament title. Casting recommendation: Michelle Williams as Toby Fournier.
O.K., Sooner — We brought it back one time for those rolling with Raegan Beers and Oklahoma.
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; Harry How / Getty Images, Grant Halverson / Getty Images, Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
new video loaded: ‘Flesh’ by David Szalay Wins 2025 Booker Prize
transcript
transcript
‘Flesh’ by David Szalay Wins 2025 Booker Prize
David Szalay became the first British Hungarian to win the prestigious Booker Prize for his novel “Flesh.”
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“I think fiction can take risks. I think it’s one of the things that it can do. It can take aesthetic risks, formal risks, perhaps even moral risks, which many other forms, narrative forms, can’t quite do to the same extent.” “I think all six of the books in the short list really, you know, not — it’s not saying this is the headline theme, but there is that theme of reaching out, wanting a connection.”
By Shawn Paik
November 11, 2025
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights the starting points or destinations of five novels about road trips. (Even if you aren’t familiar with the book, most questions offer an additional hint about the location.) To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
In the midst of the world’s unrelenting horribleness, it’s important to make room for beauty. True! But also something of a truism, an idea that comes to hand a little too easily to be trusted. The proclamation that art matters — that, in difficult times, it helps — can sound like a shopworn self-care mantra.
So instead of musing on generalities, maybe we should focus our attention on a particular aesthetic experience. Instead of declaring the importance of art, we could look at a painting. Or we could read a poem.
A poem, as it happens, about looking at a painting.
Hayden did not take the act of seeing for granted. His eyesight was so poor that he described himself as “purblind”; as a child he was teased for his thick-framed glasses. Monet’s Giverny paintings, whose blurriness is sometimes ascribed to the painter’s cataracts, may have revealed to the poet not so much a new way of looking as one that he already knew.
Read in isolation, this short poem might seem to celebrate — and to exemplify — an art divorced from politics. Monet’s depiction of his garden, like the garden itself, offers a refuge from the world.
But “Selma” and “Saigon” don’t just represent headlines to be pushed aside on the way to the museum. They point toward the turmoil that preoccupied the poetry of Hayden and many of his contemporaries.
“Monet’s ‘Waterlilies’” was published in a 1970 collection called “Words in the Mourning Time.” The title poem is an anguished response to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and to the deepening quagmire in Vietnam. Another poem in the volume is a long elegy for Malcolm X. Throughout his career (he died in 1980, at 66), Hayden returned frequently to the struggles and tragedies of Black Americans, including his own family.
Born in Detroit in 1913, Hayden, the first Black American to hold the office now known as poet laureate of the United States, was part of a generation of poets — Gwendolyn Brooks, Dudley Randall, Margaret Danner and others — who came of age between the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts movement of the ’60s.
A poet of modernist sensibilities and moderate temperament, he didn’t adopt the revolutionary rhetoric of the times, and was criticized by some of his more radical peers for the quietness of his voice and the formality of his diction.
But his contemplative style makes room for passion.
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