March Madness: The Ambrose Burnside Memorial Beard-O-Rama Bracket

Think what you will of Ambrose Burnside, but he is the only Civil War general who has a style of facial hair named after him—an enduring legacy that surpasses any achievement nearly any of us can claim. And so it is in Burnside’s honor that we launch the first-ever Emerging Civil War beard tournament to see who has the best facial hair of the war: The Ambrose Burnside Memorial Beard-O-Rama Bracket!

This is “March madness,” indeed!

Because Burnside has achieved such bewhiskered renowned, he won’t participate in the tournament. (He has facial hair named after him. Who else can make that boast beside Fu Manchu?)

Instead, we have sixteen other officers ornamented with impressive facial hair, nominated by our staff of highly trained ECW barber-chair generals. Seedings were determined based on the number of nominations each officer received in a blind nominating process.

We’ll pair our participants in face-to-face match-ups—one per day—and YOU will get to vote on who has the better beard. We’ll announce each match up at noon, Monday through Thursday, for the next two weeks. You can vote here on the blog or on the ECW Facebook page. On Fridays, we’ll announce the winners of the week’s contests.

Once we have our Elite Eight, we’ll repeat the process the following week to narrow down the facial field for our Final Four.

And then, during the last week of the month, you will get to pick our winner.

Expect some surprises and fun along the way!