Gatti made a run for us over to Anna’s for burritos today, where I had a beef tongue burrito with salsa, guacamole, lettuce and hot sauce. I guess a lot of people don’t go in for the tongue, I think mostly out of a mild breed of fear. Or just being grossed out by the idea. Thing is, tongue’s a pretty tasty cut of cow, albeit a little fatty if you get a cut from further back in the mouth. Really though, I think people would enjoy it if they could separate the source from the savoring.

Someone, and I’m not saying me, should make a website where you can somehow coerce friends into trying new foods. Something along the lines of what we just did for Sheraton’s NCAA sponsorship, but instead of changing your Facebook status if your team loses, you have to try and burrito stuffed with cow tongue.

Oh what’s that? You didn’t know we just did a site for Sheraton? Well let me tell you all about it. You’ll enjoy this.

In celebration of March Madness we helped our friends at Sheraton out with a little site they called the NCAA Challenge. The goal here was to give friends the opportunity to face off against one another by picking the teams they’d be rooting for throughout the tournament and then allowing them to pick a little something they’d do if their teams lose. Not trying tongue in this case, but it could range from doing a few cheerleader moves in favor of the winning team, to maybe just doing your opponent’s laundry. You know, whatever you think is worth the risk. We built the site using Facebook Connect, which allowed us to use both Facebook’s authentication and friend network as the foundation for bringing fans together and spreading the word.

Pretty cool, right? You should check it out before the tournament’s over at sheraton.com/ncaa.
Sure, you can’t get your friends to eat anything strange, but you can at least encourage a plethora of Facebook-centric tomfoolery, or my personal favorite, taking photos of your kids dressed up in gear from the winning team.
For my part, not having children, loosely interpret this to the variety of porcelain animals scattered around my desk. In fact, just today I realized I lost a round against Andy and started looking for pint-sized Louisville gear.

And look what I found!

That’s right- a porcelain cow, dressed in a basketball uniform. See, there you were, sitting there thinking about how contrived it was for me to try and link my beef tongue burrito in with a site about college basketball, little knowing that somewhere out there, someone has been hard at work bringing the two together in a way that lined up perfectly with the plans I had for my porcelain children. It’s kismet, I say. Three seemingly unrelated things, riding high on a cosmically harmonious wave. And that, to me, is internet.