March Media Madness: Determining America's Worst Podcaster
Bracketology meets podcasting as we make sport of the influencer game. Plus, a $1000 reader contest
Welcome to March Media Madness, the inaugural tournament to crown America’s Worst Podcaster! Happily, this first intellectual airball extravaganza takes place amid a podcaster-driven global panic over a Jeffrey Epstein-driven World War that’s ignited mass firings, arrests, media self-immolations, viral fraggings, and a cancel culture program that for once, left and right can agree upon.
These, in other words, are the podcaster salad days, when the musings of Candace Owens, Jennifer Welch, Chris Cillizza, and Tucker Carlson are more important than interest rate hikes or G8 meetings.
Why an America’s worst Podcaster tournament? Because in this sport, errors and wrongness win. In podcasting, you don’t pile up clicks or shoot up the pod-charts with pinpoint swishes like Louisville’s deep-bombing Curry-but-taller sensation Mikel Brown, or with a Kobestalgic three-level scoring bag like UK’s Darryn Peterson. You do it bricking 40-footers from the logo, taking seven-step layups, and breaking your own ankles with crazy-ass theories that send fact-checkers jumping off buildings.
Though we’re airing wrap-ups of results and lowlights on Today’s News with Michael Tracey, audiences will have a say in outcomes going forward. America’s Worst Podcaster! works like the NCAA tourney, except the wrongest, most depraved, or most indefensibly boring podcaster advances in each round.
Podcasters won’t be the only winners. We’re giving away a $1000 prize to the Racket reader who sends in the best pitch or sample clip for a terrible podcast. The Pedophile Report is quasi-taken, but if you have a craven algorithm-chasing show concept like Witch Hunting For Dollars or Penguins for MAGA or Connecting Shitloads of Dots or whatever, we’ll give the prize to the best pitch. The five closest runners-up will get “It’s a Podcaster Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand” t-shirts. Rumors that Racket will pay extravagantly for the taxidermied heads of The Vanguard are just that, rumors, spread by the lying deep state.
The schedule called for narrowing to a Smug Sixteen by today, March 20th, and Michael and I settled those round-of 16 matchups in today’s show. We’ll narrow to a Fumbling Four by March 29th, and livestream on the night of the championship, announcing an illustrious non-winner simultaneous to the sounding of the buzzer at Lucas Oil Stadium.
The 2026 Worst Podcaster will also win a prize, TBD. Readers familiar with the former editor’s history may have ideas, but rest easy: editor Emily Kopp has decreed a “no sperm” awards process.
The bracket:
A note about already-completed action. Subscribers upset that they missed these matchups should be aware that round-of-32 contests were broadcast on Racket7 and RacketDeportes only. Contact your local cable carrier with questions. As for results, much like NCAA basketball, there are always upsets early, and this year was no exception:
