clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

The BIRTHDAY MADNESS bracket: Here is the best birthday of them all

New, 31 comments

We asked the internet to make five-person teams of people who share birthdays. Then we asked the internet to vote on these teams.

What’s the best five-person team you could build from nothing but people who share your birthday?

“But I don’t know which activity this five-person team would be built to do,” you might wonder.

“Quit stalling,” we would respond, “and answer the damn question.”

We posed this question to our readers, and they responded with thousands of five-person Birthday Sibling crews.

So built a BIRTHDAY SIBLINGS MADNESS bracket. We sorted through all the submissions that actually included the relevant birthdate, narrowing the field to 64 formidable teams.

We then left it to public balloting.

A few fast notes:

  1. We are trusting a combination of public knowledge and Wikipedia (itself a combination of public knowledge) on these birthdays. Therefore any errors are the fault of everyone, not us. We’re all in this together.
  2. Many people submitted teams that were almost identical, except for one or two names. Your selection committee carefully diligently parsed these tiny differences all the same.
  3. Instead of seeding based on regular season win-loss records, which don’t exist, all matchups were based strictly on calendar order.
  4. Here was the bracket. See below for each day’s full squad of birthday siblings.

It was clear from the opening round that the battle would come down to January 17’s forces of light (Muhammad Ali, Ben Franklin, Michelle Obama, Dwyane Wade, Betty White) vs. the bad boys of December 18 (Stone Cold Steve Austin, DMX, Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg, Joseph Stalin).

And in the end, perhaps it was 12/18’s incredible character concerns (I mean ... it’s Stalin) that tipped the victory to 1/17 with an overpowering 61% of the championship vote.

Congratulations to January 17, officially the best birthday on the entire calendar.

Here was the full field, by the way, since we couldn’t find a way to cram all this into a bracket:

The original field of 64 teams, exactly as submitted by our readers, typos and all

Birthday Best reader submission
Birthday Best reader submission
January 3 JRR Tolkien Jim Ross Eli Manning Greta Thunberg Sergio Leone
January 8 Elvis Presley David Bowie Stephen Hawking Rey Misterio Sr. David Silva
January 17 Michelle Obama Betty White Muhammad Ali Dwyane Wade Ben Franklin
January 19 Dolly Parton Paula Deen Mac Miller Lil Scrappy Edgar Allen Poe
January 21 Rasputin Hakeem Olajuwon Geena Davis Jam Master Jay Haloti Ngata
February 20 Rihanna Angelica Schuyler Church Charles Barkley Sidney Poitier Kurt Cobain
February 21 Sophie Turner Jordan Peele Alan Rickman Nina Simone Riyad Mahrez
February 22 George Washington Steve Irwin Julius Erving Drew Barrymore Khalil Mack
March 6 shaq gabriel garcia marquez michelangelo tyler the creator and tami taylor herself, connie britton
March 14 Simone Biles Albert Einstein Quincy Jones Michael Caine Steph Curry
March 16 @blakegriffin23, @JoelEmbiid, @FlavorFlav, @xdannyxbrownx James Madison
March 20 Mr. Rogers Spike Lee Bobby Orr Sting (the wrestler) Kathy Ireland
March 24 Peyton Manning The Undertaker Harry Houdini Chris Bosh Tommy Hilfiger
March 30 Vincent Van Gogh Celine Dion MC Hammer Eric Clapton Richard Sherman
April 2 Charlemagne Hans Christian Andersen Marvin Gaye Yung Joc @QuavoStuntin
April 4 Robert Downey Jr Heath Ledger Hugo Weaving Maya Angelou David Cross
April 7 Jackie Chan Tony Dorsett Billie Holiday Stan Winston Bill Bellamy (who coined the phrase booty call!)
April 20 Luke Kuechly Killer Mike Luther Vandross Carmen Electra George Takei
April 24 Cedric the Entertainer Kelly Clarkson Chipper Jones Barbra Streisand Kehlani
May 2 - Catherine the Great - Manfred "the Red Baron" von Richtofen - Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson - David Beckham - Christine Baranski
May 12 George Carlin Yogi Berra Tony Hawk Ving Rhames Florence Nightingale
May 13 Dennis Rodman Stephen Colbert Pusha T Honey Badger Stevie Wonder
May 18 George Strait Tina Fey Pope John Paul II Vince Young Reggie Jackson
May 19 Malcolm X Andre the Giant Grace Jones Yo Gotti Kevin Garnett
June 22 Kris Kristofferson Meryl Streep Cyndi Lauper John Dillinger Erin Brockovich
June 24 Mick Fleetwood Lionel Messi Mindy Kaling Tiny Lister RoboCop
July 1 Pamela Anderson Princess Diana Missy Elliott Carl Lewis Plies
July 2 thurgood marshall johnny weir josé canseco dave thomas (the wendy's guy) sylvia rivera (trans rights legend)
July 6 Zion Williamson The Dalai Lama Frida Kahlo 50 Cent Dmitri Polyakov
July 9 Fred Savage Kelly McGillis Jimmy Smits Brian Denehey Tom Hanks
July 12 Brock Lesnar Henry David Thoreau Charlie Murphy Richard Simmons Malala
July 16 Orville Redenbacher Barry Sanders Will Ferrell Carli Lloyd Corey Feldman
July 20 Alexander the Great, Gregor Mendel, Sir Edmund Hillary, Ray Allen, Sandra Oh
July 23 Woody Harrelson Slash Monica Lewinsky Gary Payton Daniel Radcliffe
July 24 Amelia Earhart Zelda Fitzgerald Barry Bonds J-Lo Bindi Irwin
August 3 Tom Brady Martha Stewart Martin Sheen Ryan Lochte Todd Gurley
August 8 Roger Federer Betty Boop Sable Matthew Henson (first man to North pole) Emiliano Zapata (peasant hero of the Mexican revolution)
August 9 Whitney Houston Deion Sanders Sam Elliott Gillian Anderson Anna Kendrick
August 14 Mila Kunis Halle Berry Steve Martin Tim Tebow Magic Johnson
August 21 Wilt Chamberlain Kenny Rogers Joe Strummer Archie Griffin Usain Bolt
September 5 Freddie Mercury Werner Herzog Michael Keaton Bob Newhart Raquel Welch
September 9 J.R. Smith Adam Sandler Bob Stoops Otis Redding Colonel Sanders
September 11 shaun livingston ed reed ludacris taraji p henson bear bryant
September 14 Bong Joon-ho Amy Winehouse Nas Deshaun Watson Walter Koenig
September 17 Patrick Mahomes Phil Jackson Alex Ovechkin Jimmie Johnson Kyle Chandler
September 21 Bill Murray Stephen King Alfonso Ribeiro Billy Porter H.G. Wells
September 24 Phil Hartman Jim Henson F Scott Fitzgerald Chief Justice John Marshall Expos legend Hubie Brooks
September 25 Will Smith Donald Glover Mark Hamill Catherine Zeta-Jones Michael Douglas
September 26 Serena Williams T.S. Eliot Linda Hamilton John Chapman AKA Johnny Appleseed Olivia Newton-John
September 29 Halsey Kevin Durant Bum Phillips Cardale Jones Calvin Johnson
October 5 Bernie Mac Mario Lemieux Neil deGrasse Tyson Travis Kelce Barry Switzer
October 10 Brett Favre Dale Earnhardt Jr David Lee Roth Tanya Tucker Mario Lopez
October 13 Jerry Rice Jermaine O’Neal Sammy Hagar Ashanti AOC
October 15 Emeril Lagasse, Ginuwine, Tito Jackson, Mario Puzo, Friedrich Nietzsche
October 28 Bill Gates Jonas Salk Julia Roberts Joaquin Phoenix Andy Richter
November 3 Colin Kaepernick Anna Wintour Kendall Jenner Charles Bronson Dolph Lundgren
November 17 Danny Devito RuPaul Martin Scorsese Billy the Kid Stephen Root
November 21 Ken Griffey Jr Björk Troy Aikman Nikki Bella Carly Rae Jepsen
November 22 Rodney Dangerfield Jamie Lee Curtis Billie Jean King Scarlett Johansson JuJu Smith-Schuster
November 29 Russell Wilson Chadwick Boseman Don Cheadle The Game C.S. Lewis
December 18 Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg, DMX, Joseph Stalin, Stone Cold Steve Austin
December 25 Jimmy Buffet Humphrey Bogart. Ed Hochuli. Ken Stabler. Annie Lennox
December 28 Stan Lee Denzel Washington Maggie Smith John Legend Seth Meyers
December 30 Tiger Woods Sandy Koufax Lebron James Rudyard Kipling Tyrese Gibson

We selected these 64 for their vague combinations of undefined power, which could range from actual skill to legendary status to the sheer comedy of seeing DMX allied with Stalin.

But we excluded one January 22 team for having too much power.

And as for the worst birthday crew, Luke might be correct here.