Could Waffle House really be the breakfast of champions?
Folks… March Madness is here. It’s quite possibly my favorite time of the year. It’s time for sports fans and even non-sports fans to come together and act like they know what they are doing as they fill out their 68-team college basketball brackets.
It’s time for Buzzer beaters. Heartbreaking defeats. Upset Alerts. Cinderella Runs. Anything and everything can happen in March and the parts of the tournament that pour over into April.
Easier to just say March Madness instead of trying to make “April Absurdity” work too, and nothing gets me juiced up like seeing the NCAA Tournament bracket in all of its glory:
THE BRACKET 🙌#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/fo6lA8hJ7g
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 16, 2025
Obviously, one of the big parts of the proceedings is smaller schools getting a chance to face off against blue blood programs. There’s nothing better than watching David knock out Goliath, and sports bettors are always trying to find that one underdog that could be the ultimate bracket buster.
After hearing about the Troy head coach’s recruiting philosophy, I might have my sights set on the Troy Trojans.
Hailing out of Troy, Alabama, the Trojans – led by their head coach Scott Cross – have danced their way into the “Big Dance.” They won the Sun Belt Conference Championship and earned an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. Troy was given the No. 14 seed in the Midwest region, and they’ve got a date with the No. 3 seed Kentucky Wildcats on Friday.
Troy certainly has their hands full with a Kentucky team that battled all season long in the SEC, which became the first conference to get 14 teams into the tournament. That being said, it sounds like the Wildcats could be in for a rude awakening, because Troy’s head coach has a fool-proof recruiting method that virtually guarantees toughness.
As he explained in an interview with KSR:
“We’re a town of 15,000 when school’s not in town, so you can imagine, you’ve got one Waffle House per 5,000 people. So probably most per capita anywhere in the country. Started off, the first two recruits I brought on campus, we’re driving down the main street.
I point out Waffle House, ask them if they want to eat there for breakfast. And they were like, ‘Waffle House? Hell no. I don’t want to go to Waffle House.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, my bad. We’ll try and eat somewhere else.’ Long story short, we signed neither one of those guys.”
Just as the Waffle House Index can be telling of how bad a natural disaster really was, the Waffle House Recruiting Test has apparently worked wonders for Scott Cross:
“A guy named Nick Stampley, who is an OKGR kind of guy, he was our third recruit to visit. We’re driving by (the Waffle House) and we don’t even say anything about Waffle House. He see’s it and he’s like, ‘Oh coach, y’all got a Waffle House here? Can we go there tomorrow?’ He’s one of the toughest guys we’ve ever coached.
From that point forward, we just kind of offhand asked (recruits), ‘Do you like Waffle House?’ If the answer is yes, we sign them. If it’s no, we never get them. I told my staff, ‘Y’all can save a lot of time and money… first phone conversation, in passing, ask them if they like Waffle House or not.'”
NEW: Troy head coach Scott Cross explains to KSR+ why he only recruits players that like Waffle House.
"We offhand ask them, do you like Waffle House? If the answer is yes, we sign them. If it's no, we never get them."
STORY: https://t.co/zWIMALgpaB pic.twitter.com/kCs6YcfuYP
— Jacob Polacheck (@PolacheckKSR) March 18, 2025
So Troy to the Final Four? A team that’s built on Waffle House has to have some sort of advantage, right? I’d be terrified if I was the Kentucky Wildcats, and for all those looking for an underdog to bust up some brackets… the Troy Trojans might be the squad to roll with.
I don’t know about you, but Waffle House has never led me wrong…
