We'd like to send out our congratulations to Penn's Chord on Blues, who -- by a tally of 461 to 133 -- were voted the Worst A Cappella Group in the Ivy League over the weekend, defeating the combined strengths of Cornell's Absolute A Cappella and Dartmouth's Cords. We love you guys and hope you continue to get worse, so that this world might once and for all eliminate a cappella in toto. Thanks for playing! Prize is in the mail... -ish.

And let's kick up the robot band one last time with the winning video:

UPDATE: What is this!? They've finally taken the video DOWN? Well, until our brutal response to that comes, enjoy some other shitty videos they made after the jump.

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Let's be honest: There's no way Penn's Chord on Blues can lose this tournament. Including them was necessary, but it also spoiled the curve, as it were. We want to make these finals interesting, however, so we're going to... hmm... "tweak" the rules:

The Worst A Cappella Group in the Ivy League Tournament Finals

Penn's Chord on Blues vs. **THE COMBINED BADNESS** of Cornell's Absolute A Cappella and Dartmouth's Cords

When: Right now through Monday at noon

Where: After the jump

It's the only way. 

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Welcome to the semifinals, dearest IvyGate readers! All of the groups have been introduced, and half of them have been destroyed forever. In the final two first round matches yesterday, the #7 Princeton Roaring 20 upset the #2 Brown Jabberwocks, 64% to 36%. It was a shocking rebuke to what we thought was an algebraically infallible seeding system -- we put a whole four minutes into picking the bracket Monday afternoon, you people! *Tears.* Anyway, in yesterday's other match and the closest to date, #3 Absolute A Cappella (Cornell) edged off #6 Living Water (Yale), 58% to 42%. It appears from the comments that Living Water presented a quandary for voters -- they were competent, but they also kept singing about the blood of Christ. And as we all know, Jesus gets no love on Halloween.

Semis, after the jump. 

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Welcome to Day Two! Day One featured two landslides, with #1, Penn's Chord on Blues, trouncing #8, Harvard's Fallen Angels by like 70 percent. Dartmouth's Cords (#4) also steamrolled the competition and beat Columbia's Nonsequitur (#5) by like 70 percent too. Thanks for playing, Harvard and Columbia!

But let us celebrate not! We must trudge forth with today's matches, however aurally painful that becomes. One of today's contestants will introduce two thus-far overlooked a cappella tropes: white rapping and beatboxing. LOTS of both.

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It's on! After the jump, the first two matches of IvyGate's Worst A Cappella Group in the Ivy League Tournament 2k7!

Watch. Vomit. Vote. They all look and sound funny!  

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Since our declaration of war on Sex and the Ivy a cappella Tuesday, we've received enough delicious YouTube submissions to feed a third-world country. But we want to feed AMERICA, so send more! These videos are obnoxiously easy to find; just search anything in Google Video, like "hey" or "bum bum" or something, and at least the first 37 videos will be of Ivy League a cappella troupes being stupid.

Missed the original post? Too lazy to click the link? Understandable. Quick catch-up: IvyGate is holding an 8-team "Worst A Capella Group in the Ivy League" tournament all next week. Competitors will be chosen based on one embarrassing/poorly edited YouTube submission of a performance, and we're not ashamed to use these single clips as qualifiers for a group's universal shittiness. So please send all YouTube video links to ivygate@gmail.com by TOMORROW EVENING.

Here's a sample from one of the submissions we received. Showing it now has no bearing on whether it will make the tournament or not, it's just... well hopefully you'll understand why we're holding the tournament after watching. This one gets REALLY good around 1:12:

Wait till you see another group's "Ducktales" video!

Hal, Jacob and Maureen are making me post something to keep my cushy "Contributing Editor" title, so (a) fuck them and (b) let's have a tournament requiring MANY posts!

[RANT ALERT: Skip the next paragraph to get to tournament details, if you so please].

We have voiced our (my) dislike for a cappella groups on this site before, but allow us to explain further. If you go to an Ivy League university, you're more than aware of these mostly talentless schmucks, because you probably have lived with at last one -- I know I did. Each school has like 75 billion of them, and they all have wretchedly unpunny names like "The Penny Loafers" (Penn) or, of course, "The Bear Necessities" (Brown). About once a semester, your friends in a cappella groups force you to see their pathetic little concerts during time that you could spend better by doing, I don't know, anything else. Some bizarre video -- usually made on iMovie by a chimpanzee -- always introduces each troupe. Then comes the opening song, which almost always is by Journey, Bon Jovi or Queen (for lady groups, Sarah McLachlan or Alanis Morisette). The "best" groups have two people that can sing, the other members just go "BUM BUM BUM BUM" in the background. 'Cause, you know, "BUM BUM BUM BUM" is definitely an improvement on an original song's use of instruments. Then they have an after party where they continue to sing, to sing, to sing...

Only mockery in tournament form can properly destroy them. So by this Friday, submit nominations (YouTube videos) to ivygate@gmail.com. We will wade through the submitted videos over the weekend and select (probably) the eight worst, so there will (probably) be one for each school. Then all of next week we will hold head-to-head matches to determine the winner based on your votes. SUBMIT NOMINATIONS NOW YOU LOVELY PEOPLE!

Let's make them stop singing -- together.