District 'pigtail' games still a mystery
As the District 3 hoops tournament approaches (preliminary games start Friday!), it gives me an excuse to pull out the below photo:
So why is my boss wearing pigtails? The prelim round of the District 3 tourney used to be referred to as the 'pigtail round.' We don't know why. But back in 2007, Chris gave his best effort to find the answer:(Post repurposed from The Lineup Card, Feb. 23, 2007)For about a week now, I haven’t been able to make it through a day without someone here in the newsroom asking me about it:What’s a pigtail game?What does pigtail mean?Why do they call it a pigtail game?Pigtail game?? Isn’t that sexist?It’s driving me bananas. I have pigtails everywhere. Pigtails on the brain. One pigtail or two? Braided or not?It’s time to find some answers….1. First and foremost, what I tell folks is this: It’s not my word. “Pigtail game” and “Pigtail round” are designations used by District 3 to describe the preliminary-round games in the District 3 basketball tournament. Since the tournament began taking more than 16 teams in some classifications, it created a need for a round before the first round. Depending on the number of teams in a bracket, some higher seeds receive a bye. Everyone else ends up in a “pigtail round.”
2. So, why pigtail?? Well, that’s the million-dollar question. Kind of like the JFK assassination, everyone has their own theory. What do all these theories have in common? It’s that none of them make any sense to me. In the past, before this topic drove me nuts, I simply told people that if you rotate the above bracket 90 degrees, the two lines for the preliminary round resemble a pair “pigtails” hanging down from the line above it. This led to many raised eyebrows and blank stares. I don’t blame them.
3. So where does that leave us, other than hopelessly lost in the midst of a blog entry that’s already sucked up three minutes of our lives? Well, what’s another few minutes of surfing, then?
Clearly, the investigation isn’t getting anywhere? Do you have any thoughts to help me crack “The Case of the Puzzling Pigtails”?