What began as good, clean fun between 32 bad businesses quickly devolved into something so violent and grotesque that it would make a great PG-13 movie featuring Lenny Kravitz in a small but pivotal role. And now, only four contenders for the Golden Poo remain, each with a worthy claim to the trophy.

Could this finally be the year that readers reward Bank of America for all the work it hasn’t been doing? Sure, it has a Golden Poo in the company trophy case, but that was found among the jars of Angelo Mozillo’s skin-orangeing cream that BofA found when it took over Countrywide. And we’ve heard through sources that don’t actually exist that CEO Brian Moynihan spends hours staring at the Silver Poo BofA won as last year’s runner-up, muttering, “So close… we were so close to winning…”

After beating out PayPal by the narrowest of margins, Walmart makes its first trip to the WCIA Semifinals since losing out to the aforementioned Countrywide in 2008. The retail behemoth has been a lock to make the tournament every year since, but has also been eliminated as early as Round Two as readers felt there were smellier fish to fry (or something like that) than Walmart. But while more and more people might have turned to Walmart to save a buck, that seems to have resulted in an uptick up consumers who aren’t thrilled with the mega retailer.

AT&T has certainly earned its way into the 2012 Semifinals. It got greedy and tried to leap-frog its way to the front of the ever-shrinking wireless pack by devouring a competitor, only to be handed its own butt on a plate by the Wonder Twins at the FCC and DOJ. The company annoyed its own customers, regulators, investors and T-Mobile subscribers who had been promised iPhones.

But all of these competitors might fall victim to this year’s rookie juggernaut, Electronic Arts. Though it gets very little attention from the mainstream press, the video game publisher is notorious for buying then destroying smaller companies, gouging customers on game prices and then tacking on costly (and occasionally worthless) downloadable content and generally making the whole gaming experience more expensive and less entertaining.

Semifinal competition kicks off today at noon, with Bank of America vs. Walmart. And then voting on EA vs. AT&T begins at noon on Friday, March 30.

Voting on each match will be open for 12 hours.

Much like they were in Round 3, results in the Semifinals will remain hidden until we declare the winners on Monday, April 2.

If you’re just stumbling into this year’s tournament, here are links to all the WCIA 2012 match-ups already in the books:

ROUND ONE:
* Target vs. Best Buy
* Bank of America vs. Chase
* Charter Communications vs. CenturyLink (Qwest)
* Wells Fargo vs. Citi
* EA vs. Sony
* Sallie Mae vs. Ticketmaster
* DirecTV vs. Dish Network
* PayPal vs. Capital One
* Sears/Kmart vs. Walmart
* Netflix vs. GameStop
* USPS vs. UPS
* Comcast vs. Time Warner Cable
* Spirit vs. Delta
* AT&T vs. Verizon
* Facebook vs. Sprint
* Google vs. Apple

ROUND TWO
* Best Buy vs. EA
* Facebook vs. USPS
* Comcast vs. DirecTV
* Bank of America vs. Citi
* Ticketmaster vs. Spirit Airlines
* PayPal vs. Charter
* AT&T vs. Apple
* Walmart vs. GameStop

ROUND THREE
* Bank of America vs. Ticketmaster
* PayPal vs. Walmart
* Facebook vs. AT&T
* Comcast vs. EA

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