It's Musical March Madness! The sprawling bracket — both a parody and a tribute to the NCAA basketball tournament, masterminded by MTV News' James Montgomery — takes the 65 biggest names in rock, splits them up into four regions, assigns them seeds and puts them up against one another in a single-elimination series of match-ups in a winner-take-all contest. We're leaving it to you to decide an actual champ in this field of 65. Over the next few weeks, we will present a series of polls that will allow you to vote for the match-ups presented in MTV News' Band Bracketology. You vote for the winners, we'll keep advancing the seeds and, in the end, we'll have some sort of champion. What will the winner receive? Little more than our esteem (as well as that of the fans) and some Internet bragging rights.
It's the last of the Sweet 16 pairings, this time in the South bracket. This particular section of the tournament has been especially cutthroat, with a lot of close calls and even more trash talk between fan bases. Who will move on? Only you can decide!
(6) Phish vs. (15) Coheed and Cambria
Even with Panic! at the Disco and the Young Veins going at it elsewhere in the tournament, the biggest showdown of the Sweet 16 is right here. Perhaps anticipating the match-up, the hardcore fans were already building a case for their favorites in the middle of second round voting. But which group of fans will rally stronger to put their favorite group over the top?
(9) Adam Lambert vs. (13) Alice in Chains
Each of these two teams overcame surging opponents in the second round to make their way to the Sweet 16. Lambert crushed a surging Creed, while Alice in Chains kept the dream alive by topping Nick Jonas (proving that sometimes experience does pay dividends). Will the grunge veterans keep pushing forward, or will they be toppled by the online army of Glamberts?