Spring Showdown: This is ScienceCenter

Muiscal intro, fancy CGI effects

Anchor 1 (voiceover): The Showdown begins! Four regions, eight games each, sixty-four top science concepts in a fight to the finish.

Anchor 2: In today's Orbit region action, two titans of Newtonian physics collide-- will Universal Gravitation maintain its orbit, or will the upstart Second Law change its momentum for the worse?

Anchor 1: Quaternions. Euler angles. Which is which, and what does their exciting clash mean for the future of physics? We'll find out what Dick Vitale thinks.

Anchor 2: And you won't believe the controversial finish of the match between dark and ordinary matter. The upset of the epoch turns on a referee's decision-- just what happened in the Fritz Zwicky Memorial Arena? We'll explain it all for you.

Anchor 1: All that, plus Mel Kiper on next month's NFL draft. Coming up right now-- this.... is ScienceCenter!

(The theme music reaches its climax. The graphics swirl dramatically. Highlights strobe past at a speed that causes seizures in rats. The title graphic splashes across the screen, then we fade up on two anchors in the studio)

Anchor 1: Good evening, and welcome to ScienceCenter. An exciting day today in the Science Showdown brackets. Albert Einstein's two best-known theories collide in a match for the ages, and the long-awaited rematch between Bosons and Fermions lived up to its billing.

Anchor 2: But we begin our coverage back where it all began, with Newtonian Physics. In one of the most controversial decisions in Showdown history, the heavy favorite to reach the Terminal Tetrahedron Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation was seeded to meet Newton's Second Law of Motion in the first round. Most commentators thought this match would come in the regional final, but the Second Law was inexplicably stuck with a #16 seed. "I guess this is what happens when you leave biologists in change of making up the brackets," said Second Law coach Bill Parcells. "We'll be ready, though."

And they certainly were ready. Universal Gravitation came out swinging, trying to exploit its infinite range to strike from a distance. The much nimbler Second Law was more than a match, though, constantly changing speed and direction to evade Gravitation's inexorable pull. Weaving in and out, the Second Law was able to build and early lead, and coasted to a victory.

(Video: Second Law Captain David Beckham at the post-game press conference) Beckham: We knew this was going to be a big match, and we had to have our best game. They really came to play today, but looking at film of their last match, Coach realized that they're just a low-energy limit of a more fundamental theory, and that really set our whole game plan. We were able to take advantage of our quickness, and that really made the difference in the end.

Anchor 1: The other match in the Seattle bracket pitted CERN's two most famous products against one another, with High-Speed Particle Physics meeting High-Speed Internet in an 8-9 game that promised to be a real track meet. Unforntuately, just hours before game time, the Higgs Boson, team captain and leading scorer, sprained an ankle tripping over an unseen dimension, and this game turned into a rout. High-speed Internet wins this one big, and moves on to face the Second Law of Motion next week.

Meanwhile, in today's most puzzling match, Euler Angles narrowly beat Quaternions in the Paul Erdos subregional. To break down what this means for mathematical physics, let's bring in our expert analyst Dick Vitale.

(Cut to Vitale, in his Florida home)

Vitale: IT WAS A SUPER-SENSTIONAL SHOWDOWN SMACKDOWN, BAYBEEE! EULER ANGLES BRIGHT THE SPIN MOVES, BABY, SHAKING AND BAKING AND ROTATING ABOUT ORTHOGONAL AXES, BUT QUATERNIONS HAD FOUR COMPONENTS, THREE OF THEM IMAGINARY. HEY, FOUR COMPONENTS, JUST LIKE THE FOUR COACHES ON MY MOUNT RUSHMORE OF COACHING, MIKE KRZYZEWSKI, COACH K, THE DOOKIES ARE AWESOME, BABY; MICHELANGELO, DEAN SMITH FROM NORTH CAROLINA; THE GENERAL, ROBERT MONTGOMERY KNIGHT, DON'T GO HUNTING WITH HIM; AND JIM BOEHEIM-- BOY IS HIS WIFE HOT! HE'S A REAL OVERACHIEVER, BAYBEE! NO IMAGINARY COMPONENTS IN HIS GAME HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What was I talking about?

(Back to the studio)

Anchor 1: Nobody knows, Dick, nobody knows.

Anchor 2: Also in Erdos subregional action, defending QED Conference champion Particle and star striker J.J. Thomson met up with their old rivals Wave and their Player of the Year candidate, G.P. Thomson. These two teams plain don't like each other, and the game got off to an ugly start. Particle coach Louis De Broglie filed a complaint before the game, arguing that Wave's famous delocalized zone defense was a violation of ISCL rules. Wave coach LouisDe Broglie replied with a complaint of his own accusing Particle players of moving backwards and forwards in time, and claiming that it's ridiculous to have the same person coaching both teams. Asked for a decision, league commissioner Richard Feynman shrugged, said "It's just one of those things," and wandered off to play the bongos.

With both teams playing the game under protest, this was a hard-fought battle. Wave attacked on the left and the right at the same time, but were unable to match the concrete physicality of Particle. They had a chance to tie at the buzzer, but the shot was swatted away. Wave coach De Broglie immediately filed a complaint, citing unfair interference and the fact that everyone keeps mispronouncing his name, so this one isn't over yet. A decision is expected as soon as the commissioner returns from a "research" trip to Polynesia.

Anchor 1: Speaking of intense rivalries, the most highly anticipated game of the day matched Einstein's two most famous theories against one another, with six seed General Relativity facing the eleven seed, Special Relativity. General Relativity came into the season with high expectations, but injuries and poor team chemistry-- most notably an inability to work together with Quantum Mechanics-- hampered them in the early part of the season. They appear to have righted the ship recently, though, and came into this match riding a six-game winning streak.

This was a close-fought game, but in the end, the Generalists showed why they were a popular pre-season pick. Late in the fourth quarter, retiring General Relativity star Tiki Barber broke free, and cruised in for the score that gave them the final victory.

(Video clip of Barber after the game) Barber: Well, the guys on the line did a great job of blocking for me, and once I hit the hole, it was just a matter of following the shortest path through a curved space-time into the end zone. It was a great game, and we're looking forward to next week.

Anchor 1: Barber's twin brother Ronde, who plays for Special Relativity, congratulated him after the game, and said he would be rooting for Tiki in the next round.

Anchor 2: But who would they play in the next round? They'll face the winner of the match between Descriptive Statistics and Inferential Statistics, and to break down that result, here's Dick Vitale again.

Vitale: THIS WAS A TOTAL BLOWOUT BABY, FROM START TO FINISH. DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS IN A TOTAL RUNAWAY, THEY'RE LOADED WITH P.T.P.ERS, PRIME TIME PLAYERS, BAYBEE, JUST LIKE OHIO STATE, WITH MR. ODEN AND MR. CONLEY, AND HEAD COACH THAD MATTA-- HE'S ALMOST AS BALD AS I AM HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. BUT THE BEST PLAYER IN THE NATION IS NO CONTEST BABY, IT'S J.J. REDICK OF DUKE-- what? he graduated? oh, um-- KEVIN DURANT OF DUKE, HE CAN DO IT ALL, BABY, DRIVE TO THE BASKET, HIT THE TIRFEC-- what? he doesn't play for Duke? are you sure? oh god, i'm so confused...

Anchor 2: So are we all, Dick, so are we all.

Anchor 2: Moving right along, we come to the the highly anticipated 7-10 game between Bosons and Fermions. Though they had the lower seed, Fermions were picked to win this game by most experts, given that they're the primary constituents of ordinary matter. In a surprising development, though, Bosons jumped out to an early lead, and never looked back. After the game, Fermion coach Pam Dirac explained why:

(Video: An irritated looking Paul Dirac) Dirac: It was all about teamwork, really. They came out and played as a team, moving like a single particle, while we just couldn't get it together. Our guys were out there running around like idiots, and no two of them were ever running the same play. And that's your ball game, right there. By the way, the name is "Paul," not "Pam." Those are initials, you see, Paul Adrien Maurice, and not--

Anchor 2: Whatever.

Anchor 1: Finally, we come to the day's most controversial result. Second seed Dark Matter came into this match as an overwhelming favorite, accounting for almost 90% of the matter in the Universe. In a stunning decision, though, Ordinary Matter was awarded the victory by forfeit, after referees were unable to directly detect even a single particle of the Dark Matter team.

(Video: Ordinary Matter coach Edwin Hubble orbiting the arena faster than can be explained based on its visible contents) Hubble: I don't see anything. Do you see anything? There's nothing to see.

Anchor 1: Dark Matter coach Sean Carroll was visibly outraged, and needed to be restrained from attacking Hubble.

(Video: Carroll brandishing a sheaf of papers, being dragged from the arena by burly security personnel) Carroll: This is ridiculous! We have false-color pictures! From NASA! Look at the pictures, you [BLEEP]ing idiots!

Anchor 1: After the game, Dark Matter owner Vera Rubin said that the team would be filing a formal protest with the league office, asking that the referee's ruling be overturned. The legal ramifications of this decision might take weeks to sort out. One thing's for sure, though: we've pretty much run this joke into the ground.

Anchor 2: You've got that right, so let's take a break. When we return, Mel Kiper breaks down Juan Maldacena's recent workout for NFL scouts, and explains how this will affect Lubos Motl's position in the upcoming draft. And Peter Woit is in the news again-- what did he do this time, and how does this affect his pursuit of Lee Smolin's home run record? Find out, when ScienceCenter returns, after this.

(Video: highlight clips flash by too fast to make out any details. Theme music plays, and a giant logo graphic sweeps across the screen from right to left, leaving the screen black.)