Despite my elimination from the tournament, I am, as promised, providing a second look at the bracketology of the hot blogger showdown hosted by the Ladies . . ., for which the second-round results now are available.

For the record, if you're a guy and you went and voted for another guy in the hot blogger bracket at his request, that does not call your orientation into question. In that respect, it's a lot like wearing a garter belt while pitching for the Durham Bulls.

Here is how the competition breaks down now that bloggers have been forced to cross bracket lines by the unforgiving reality that math is a harsh mistress:

• The No. 3 seeds fared better than the No. 1 seeds, as two top-ranked contenders fell in the Final 44: Orson Swindle and Will Leitch, the latter of whom was outpolled by an eye-popping 4,431-887 margin by Matt Jones. Meanwhile, the only third-seeded blogger not to advance was Slick Bomb, who fell to One More Dying Quail. OMDQ shrewdly used his emotionally moving paean to his father as his writing sample. Dang it! I should have thought of that! Instead of using my son to generate support, I should have used my Dad! If I'd used them both, I'd have been unbeatable! (All kidding aside . . . read OMDQ's entry. It's quality stuff.)
• The second round proved cruel to the two seeds. Not only did no No. 2 seed advance, none of them were even competitive, garnering 17.1 per cent of the vote in the AFC North, 36.7 per cent in the National League West, 38.4 per cent in the Campbell Conference, and 41.3 per cent in the Mid-Atlantic Conference. To find a performance that weak from a No. 2 seed, you'd have to go all the way back to Bruce Pearl's 2006 Tennessee team!
• The hot blogger bracket has a history of early upsets dating back over a week. Of the 22 contestants advancing to the third round, seven were seeded fifth or higher and 10 were seeded 10th or lower.
• Although the AFC North is the only bracket in which neither the No. 1 seed nor the No. 3 seed has been eliminated, there is no bracket in which both the No. 1 seed and the No. 3 seed have been eliminated.
• The Mid-Atlantic Conference was quite unkind to the favorites in the second round, as the second-, third-, and fourth-seeded bloggers all suffered defeat at the hands of opponents seeded 13th or below. No bracket was more brutal than the National League West, though; there, Awful Announcing was the only higher-seeded team to prevail against a lower-seeded opponent.
• As much as I would like to think otherwise, geography does not appear to be playing a part in this tournament. For instance, I was placed in the AFC North, so, when it came time for me, a Georgian, to go up against Run Up the Score, a Pennsylvanian, I assumed my loss was attributable to the fact that my votes had farther to travel up the internet tubes, thereby weakening my position. However, this proved not to be the case, as Jay Busbee took a blog with the word "South" in the title and won a second-round matchup in the AFC North against The Big Picture, who used the following smear tactics:

I'm out of it now, so we can all go back to using Kristin Davis as our definition of "hot."

Keep your eye on the Ladies . . . for the forthcoming third round.

Go 'Dawgs!