Madness on the Edge of Town

Online voting continues through this weekend.

So we're one week into round-one voting on City Paper/Nick Norlen's mammoth Philly Madness field-of-76 bracket (www.citypaper.net/phillymadness), and what have we learned?

• Philly loves Ben Franklin and/or hates John Street (96.4 percent to 3.6 percent at press time).

• The Rocky Statue initially took a beating by the Love Sculpture but has rallied and could win on points in the late rounds (52 percent to 48 percent).

• People really, really like cheesesteaks as compared to soft pretzels and Tastykakes (67 percent to 16 percent to 17 percent).

• People just can't decide between The Roots and Hall and Oates. (The lead has changed hands constantly; it currently stands at 53 percent to 47 percent, advantage H&O. )

• It appears someone will probably win the Howard Eskin/Stephen A. Smith matchup (52.6 percent to 47.4 percent), though we have had to consider our tie-breaker method.

• Philebrity (45 percent) and Attytood (44 percent) are the circa-1992 George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton of round one, with Eschaton (11 percent) its H. Ross Perot.

Online voting continues through this weekend at www.citypaper.net/phillymadness (ends midnight, Sunday, March 18) and we're still accepting brackets (at the office until 5 p.m., March 16, or in the mail, postmarked by March 17), which you can download by going to www.citypaper.net and looking for "Philly Madness" in the left navigation bar.