FWD: Setting the record straight... 2017 Red Bull Bracket Reel Champions? Yes or No?

Welcome friends! 🤙

If you read the title then here is the tl;dr ('Too Long Didn't Read'):

No. We were not the Champions. No. We were not the Losers. We were... Voided. Removed. Erased from the record books. It's almost as if we were never there. A little poetic considering our final video ended something like this:

November 12th, 2017 | Orem, Utah

88/90! The Judges gave us an 88/90! I can remember how excited I was to see the highest score of the entire competition. And in the National Finals? After 5 weeks of non-stop chaos that is Red Bull Bracket Reel... our team was hours away from claiming the title.

Our advantage over the competition was great. All we needed to do was secure some 'FAN' votes and Red Bull would soon be sending us that trophy, asking us to shoot music videos with them (yay!), flying us out to LA, the whole shabang... and we we're so close. Sooo close.

The way the competition works is similar to March Madness, but for dance videos. Red Bull selects 16 Universities from allover the U.S. and matches us head-to-head until there is a final national winner. Every week teams are given a new song and teams need to choreograph, rehearse, shoot, edit, and upload all in a week... did we mention all in one week?

Anyways, there we were. At the top of the bracket, at the end of the road, staring at a freaking tie!! A tie!! Luckily for us there was a rule for such an event. According to the rules in the event of a tie the team with the highest Judge score wins. That's us! Ooh I thought we had just won a national championship!

I can remember everyone's excitement for what we had just done. 5 weeks man. 5 weeks of scouting for locations so we aren't bringing our audience the same old studio wall. 5 weeks of creating a new story every week. 5 weeks of pure adrenaline, stress, and the need for wings lol good thing we were stacked on RedBulls [#shamelessplug]

This all ended after I answered the f***** phone.

*rnnnnnnnnggg* *rnnnnnnnnnngggg*

Long story short, we were ineligible to win because we were not all 'currently enrolled students'. Our team consisted of some teachers and alumni, which was not allowed this year (the rule has since been modified). Bummer. We were unaware of the rule and we honestly had no idea. But we understand, rules are rules and we accepted our resignation. [sad violin]

So was our 5 weeks of 5 videos worth it? Hell. I say yes. Plus, we didn't walk away completely empty handed... RedBull did give us some dope exposure and some cool hoodies:

Ya Boi,

🤙

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