I know it’s April 1st, but this is no joke.
As of right now, #1 seed and defending champion Eric Church is on the verge of an Elite 8 exit at the hands of Alan Jackson. We’re now some 80,000 votes in with less than two days remaining in the round, and things have taken a turn for the worse. Chief was neck-and-neck with Big Al the entire weekend, however as of right now, Alan has taken a fairly commanding lead. Granted, it’s only 170 votes so it’s far from over and we’ve definitely seen bigger comebacks in this tournament, however, this is the first time Eric has trailed at all in the entire tournament. Church Choir fans better get those votes in if they want to see Eric make a run at back-to-back championships.
In other bracket news, Tyler Childers and George Strait are deadlocked in a virtual tie. As of right now, two votes are separating them, literally TWO votes between the King of Country Music and our tournament dark horse, the Kentucky Kid, Tyler Childers. This one is going to come down to the wire and we absolutely love it.
On the other side of the bracket, we have a pretty heated battle between Chris Stapleton and Chris Young. Since the Elite 8 began, Chris Young has maintained a lead on Stapleton, however as of this morning, Stapleton has jumped in front with a microscopic 15 vote lead. It’s anyone’s ballgame at this point and we almost guarantee a whole mess of lead changes in this matchup. Like the previous two matchups, this one is going to come down to the wire as well.
Finally, we have Luke Combs and Jon Pardi going head-to-head in our last matchup, and while it sounds almost impossible to stop Luke Combs’ momentum right now, Jon Pardi has managed to close the gap in the second half, bringing it to less than 80 votes. If Jon continue this push, we could be in for a close finish.
As always, you can vote every 5 minutes and at this point, anything can happen. It’s anyone’s tournament to win. Voting for the Elite 8 ends on Wednesday, April 3rd at 3:30am CT so there is still plenty of time to get those votes in.
