Who in the Blue Hell is Joe Lunardi anyway?

The man who you hear being called by name seemingly every 5 minutes on ESPN beginning in February of every year, now has Kentucky on an absurd ‘Next Three Out’ list, after the trouncing we took from Vandy in Nashville last night. He just makes stuff like this up and ESPN runs with it. Tents pitched and all.

But why does The Worldwide Leader put so much stock into what Lunardi says the tournament will look like? The man isn’t even on the selection committee.  He does PR work for Saint Joe’s in Philly and calls the Basketball games for the Hawks on TV. I just don't picture him as being all Will Hunting with a dry erase marker and a whiteboard. 

My guess is that he has some incriminating photos of Coach K and Dicky V's glass eye, or Chris Berman's mother in her late-evening attire.

So, is he just completely Rain Man-like unreal when it comes to picking and assigning numbers and spots to teams? No, no he is not. He managed to actually, however, do a remarkable job last season in his Bracketology picks, selecting 67 of the 68 teams correctly who would be fitted with dancing shoes.

That is pretty impressive, we admit to that, but seriously, he has been doing this for quite some time now and he has gotten it right once. I don’t think that kind of track record would be applauded in operating room. Besides, think about it, with all the information that is more than readily available to you , most average fans could correctly predict 60 of those 68 dancers. I’m not saying it is nothing short of miraculous that he picked 67 of 68 and THEIR SEEDS correctly, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that more than 1 person could do this each March.

And while he may not be on the selection committee, he rubs elbows and hob-knobs with those who are. Chances are,  Lunardi has a little heads-up come his way in regards to what the committee is leaning towards anyhow. Matter of fact, I think it is more a sham than it is intellect.

But should anybody really put faith into what Joe Lunardi says? Last year’s results say yes, overall body of work from the past, say, 7 years, says Hell no. Lunardi is a hack or has gotten some notoriety for these little number tricks he does and has managed, with the help of ESPN, to actually make people think his opinion matters.

He is not even the most successful, in way of being right, of the bracketologist who do this on a yearly basis.

Like I said though, it’s all right in front of you anyways. The factor that keeps getting in the way is the mindset, tendencies and bias of the humans who are actually making the selections. And, in large part deservedly on Kentucky’s part, I think we all know how this is going to end up.  Sometimes, I think that the selection committee just concedes that they are morons and not in any way sufficient in basketball knowledge and foresight to handle the job of seeding the dance, so they just go with what Lunardi could be saying at any given time. Keeps the pizza delivery charges down, and heck, if it has already been said 10 thousand times on ESPN, America will buy it. It's not a hard sale, and they are home in time to watch Duck Dynasty.

(Been a minute or two since I made a post, I have noticed that the blog reverted back to an ego stroke for a  certain fantasy baseball league. Everything comes full circle so they say, and I think the suits at headquarters always wanted it this way. For now, I bid you ado.)