{"id":102771,"date":"2017-03-17T00:00:31","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T05:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=102771"},"modified":"2017-03-17T00:00:31","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T05:00:31","slug":"march-madness-2017-edition-coming-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2017\/03\/17\/102771-march-madness-2017-edition-coming-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness 2017 edition &#8211; coming soon!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/March_Madness_Soon_Generic.png\" class=\"no-lazyload\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-102772 no-lazyload\" src=\"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/March_Madness_Soon_Generic-300x198.png\" alt=\"March_Madness_Soon_Generic\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/March_Madness_Soon_Generic-300x198.png 300w, https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/March_Madness_Soon_Generic.png 469w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Spring is in the air, and it&#8217;s finally that time of year when\u00a0fans get to\u00a0vote on their favorite Tolkien characters. Yes, <strong>Middle-earth March Madness<\/strong>\u00a0is back for 2017! If you are new to TheOneRing.net, Middle-earth March Madness is our adaptation\u00a0on the popular NCAA Basketball tournament that takes place every March\/April in the United States. It&#8217;s our chance to have some fun matching up middle-earth power players against each other. Past winners include <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2012\/04\/05\/54799-samwise-gamgee-conquers-middle-earth-march-madness-2012\/\" target=\"_blank\">Samwise Gamgee,<\/a>\u00a0Gandalf, \u00a0who won in both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2013\/04\/09\/70646-and-the-2013-middle-earth-march-madness-champion-is\/\" target=\"_blank\">2013<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2015\/04\/09\/97698-and-the-winner-of-2015-middle-earth-march-madness-is\/\" target=\"_blank\">2015<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2014\/04\/12\/88610-congratulations-to-our-2014-middle-earth-march-madness-champion-thranduil\/\" target=\"_blank\">Thranduil<\/a>, and last year&#8217;s winner <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2016\/04\/07\/100627-middle-earth-march-madness-final-winner\/\" target=\"_blank\">Galadriel<\/a>, who defeated the mighty Morgoth in the final round.<\/p>\n<p>To\u00a0mix things up a bit and give some\u00a0other, very\u00a0deserving characters a chance, the past winners mentioned above will sit this year out in the esteemed &#8216;Champion&#8217;s Hall of Fame.&#8217; As for this year&#8217;s\u00a0brackets, the four divisions will pit characters against each other based on the following criteria:<\/p>\n<p>Movies Only &#8211; characters who appeared only in Peter Jackson&#8217;s The Lord of the Rings and\/or The Hobbit movies<br \/>\nBooks Only &#8211; characters who didn&#8217;t make the final cut for the movies<br \/>\nMovies and Books &#8211; characters who graced both the written page and the silver screen<br \/>\nWider Mythos &#8211; Middle-earth characters not in the movies from Tolkien&#8217;s works outside of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.<\/p>\n<p>Our staff are sorting out the field of 64 initial combatants now, and we\u2019ll be posting the first bracket and polls this <strong>Monday, March 20<\/strong>. Stay tuned to the front-page of TORn for the announcement to start voting, and follow along on Twitter and FB with #middleearthmarchmadness @theoneringnet<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spring is in the air, and it&#8217;s finally that time of year when\u00a0fans get to\u00a0vote on their favorite&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,197,36,7,4,35,5,29,31,30,74,38,148,1636,2497,1911,149,37],"tags":[792,165,221,3066,2898,2915,2909,2014,3050,2620,2760,2759],"class_list":["post-102771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-fans","category-fotr-book","category-hobbit-book","category-hobbit-movie","category-lotr-books","category-lotr-movies","category-fotr-movie","category-rotk-movie","category-ttt-movie","category-jackson","category-rotk-book","category-hobbit","category-the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey","category-the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies","category-the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug","category-lotr","category-ttt-book","tag-jrr-tolkien","tag-peter-jackson","tag-the-hobbit","tag-the-hobbit-films","tag-the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey","tag-the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies","tag-the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings-films","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-return-of-the-king","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-two-towers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-qJB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102771"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102776,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102771\/revisions\/102776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}