Pulled Into Syracuse's 2011 City Wing Tournament

Now that college basketball season is in full gear, what better way to watch the Syracuse Orange than when accompanied by wings? After plenty of extensive research, devouring pounds of chicken, and Buffalo sauce drenched fingers, I've decided to mesh the two together on the blog and do a City of Syracuse wing tournament in the style of an NCAA March Madness basketball tournament.

The field will separate into four divisions loosely separated by region with seeds of 1 through 4 based on rankings on my own account and from other online review sites and internet search results. Each participant will be judged on wing tenderness, size, skin, sauce flavor and amount, balance, and heat-scale with maybe a couple extra points (free throws?) for blue cheese and celery.

Each bracket will start off with 1 seeds playing against 4 seeds and 2 seeds playing 3 seeds. Winners will be determined after tallying up the points in each category (i.e. the wings with the better tenderness, sauce, etc... will each receive a point and the wings with the highest point total out of the 7 categories advances to the next round. If one particular category is a tie, no point will be awarded).

To encourage a little continuity, all wing orders will be ordered "hot" unless no other option is available (i.e. barbecue, char-grilled, Sal's, Asian-style, and breaded, will only be ordered if Buffalo style is unavailable). I realize the argument will be to have all participants judged on a basis of serving traditional Buffalo wings, but maybe that will be a tournament for another time. Also, no chains (I'd love to include the "Wings Over" franchise because I love their wings and sauces, but I gotta omit them). Mind you, this is not an official tournament or anything. Just for fun and for reference.

Here we go... the 16 teams in the 2011 tournament... cue the appropriate music...

Downtown 1) Dinosaur Bar-B-Que 4) J Ryan's Pub 2) Bull & Bear Pub 3) Syracuse Suds Factory	Tipperary Hill Blarney Stone (1 Rosie's Sports Bar & Grill (4 Patsy's Pizza (2 Nibsy's Pub (3
Northside / Eastwood 1) Shifty's Bar & Grill 4) Gianni's Bronx Style Pizza 2) Change of Pace 3) OIP (Eastwood)	Southside / SU Hill Swallow's (1 Dorian's Gourmet Pizza (4 Varsity Pizza (2 Chuck's Cafe (3

Results from each regional bracket will be listed in the coming weeks. The Final Four and champion of Pulled Into Syracuse's 2011 Wing Tournament will be crowned in March, so stay tuned!