In the past, when talking about the KidVid Tournament, I would inevitably make a joke about not to bet on the results as doing so could potentially be in violation of state and/or federal law. Well, I'm proud to say that I've found a way around that problem and eliminated one particular punchline. I'm announcing the Official KidVid Tournament 2012 Pool. That's right, no longer will you have to scour the Internet for unofficial pools related to the tourney or visit shady offshore gambling facilities. For KidVid Tournament 2012, you can enter the Zooglobble-sanctioned pool. Look at the brackets (attached at the bottom of this post), figure out who think will win each round, and e-mail that to me (zooglobble AT earthlink DOT net) by midnight West Coast time Sunday night/Monday morning. OK, sure, you're saying, but why should I do this? Well, there will be two winners, who will each receive a prize pack of 3 great family music CDs (I promise they'll be good). The first winner will be the person who correctly guesses the most total matchups (with 5 points given to correctly picking the winner of the whole tournament), with any ties broken randomly. The second winner will be picked randomly from all entries. You can get multiple additional entries for the random drawing by doing one or more of four things: 1) Tweeting about the tournament with a link to the KidVid Tournament 2012 bracket listing and using the hashtag #kidvid2012 2) Being a "fan" of the Zooglobble Facebook page and at least one other tournament hosting site (see the bracket listing for complete list). 3) Signing up for the Zooglobble newsletter (off to the side or at the very bottom of this post). 4) Tweeting about the tournament with a link to one of the first-round matchups next week and using the hashtag #KidVid2012. When you send me your pool entry, just let me know if you're submitting extra entries through items 1-3 below (either because you're already a "fan" or a newsletter subscriber or because you've newly become so). I'll look for anything you do on #4 once the tournament starts, obviously. If you have any questions, just shoot me an e-mail. Thanks, and have fun! [Brackets and newsletter signup after the jump.]

The KidVid Tournament 2012 is (almost) here! That's right, folks, the web's most popular fan-based tournament for the arbitrary qualitative ranking of kids music videos is back! For the sixth straight year, the best kids music videos of the previous twelve months will compete against each other in a frenzied two-to-three week period as if the determination of quality is based on fan interest on the Internet. I think it's kinda awesome. KidVid Tournament 2011 featured an exciting final showdown between Keller Williams and Sugar Free Allstars. Who'll make it to the final round this year? Well, that is up to you. So last week I announced my favorite kids music videos of 2011. In the past I've had to whittle down my list of favorite kids music videos down to just 16 to fit them into the tournament. But not this year. That's right, we're expanding to 32 videos! That's one more round and 16 more videos to jump into the action. This, friends, is the true March Madness (which is probably a trademarked phrase, so it's not the true March Madness at all). And, if you're going to add 16 more games, you're gonna need more help hosting these matchups. So I'm happy to announce that there will be eight great kids music writers and radio folks helping out to host this tournament: Ages 3 and Up! Dadnabbit Gooney Bird Kids Hilltown Families Variety Show Out With the Kids Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child Zooglobble (of course I'm hosting, too!) As for the matchups themselves, the first-round matchups and all the brackets are listed after the jump...