WASHINGTON — There are plenty of ways to enjoy March Madness. You can debate the merits of each NCAA Tournament team and pick upsets and sleepers, as Dave Preston and I did yesterday. You can ignore the noise and just seek out a spot to root on your school with fellow alumni.

Or, you can rank the mascots from each school.

This is not, for the record, an objective measure of ferocity, or scariness, or which personified character you’d want behind you in a fight. It’s a completely subjective measurement, based on criteria literally made up as I go. You’re welcome to argue the merits of my rankings, but it would be a futile exercise, as they have no merit.

With no further ado, let’s get this countdown underway. We’ll do the bottom eight in one group, then in sets of five until we hit the top 10. There are plenty of duplicates, so tiebreakers will be awarded based on physical appearance. Yes, that’s shallow, but so is this entire exercise.