Joe Lunardi visits Duquesne, crows that bracketology now accepted in Merriam-Webster
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Joe Lunardi proudly puffed out his chest and, suddenly, he felt like the tallest man inside UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse, which was populated at the time by several tall Duquesne basketball players.
What was the trigger? Bracketology has been accepted into the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
JOEY BRACKETS is IN THE DICTIONARY! @ESPNLunardi https://t.co/y0Q8vCV3IU
— Drew Dickerson (@Drew_Dickerson) September 28, 2023
“It was on CNN,” he said.
Lunardi was the featured speaker Thursday night at Duquesne’s Basketball Tipoff event, ushering in the college basketball season for coaches Keith Dambrot of the men and Dan Burt of the women.
Lunardi famously posts NCAA Tournament brackets year-round, including once a week from the end of the season through the NBA Draft in June, monthly in the summer and autumn, weekly during the nonconference season and twice a week in January and February.
“Personally, I’d rather be working on my short game,” he said. “But the die-hards want to know if Joe picked their team as a 2 or a 3.”
He said he inserted Duquesne into one of his summertime brackets, noting Dambrot returns several key members of last season’s 20-victory team. Will Duquesne earn its first NCAA Tournament berth since 1977?
“Duquesne bubbled up for one month in the summer, which means nothing, really,” Lunardi said. “I do it (year-round) because it generates content, and I’m in the content generation business and I like getting paid. What I said about Duquesne in June will have no impact at all in March.”
Lunardi, 63, got his start in the business of college basketball as a print reporter while attending St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia.
With St. Joseph’s, Temple, Villanova, La Salle and Penn composing the heralded Big 5, Lunardi said he “majored in college basketball,” watching legendary coaches such as John Chaney and Rollie Massimino.
“I saw all these great teams from all over the country,” he said. “I sat there, and I just wanted to be one of those guys on press row because I can’t play a lick. I can’t go to my left, I can’t touch net. Other than that …
“I just started studying how they put the brackets together. So, it was kind of an accident.”
In the late 1980s, he became editor and part owner of Blue Ribbon, a preseason college basketball guide. When he expanded it with a publication printed on Selection Sunday, his world exploded.
“In order to do it, we had to pre-assign writers all over the place,” he said. “I was digging into the field in February, early March and learning how the (selection) committee went about its business.”
He first bracket was posted on ESPN.com in 1996. Eventually, he became a fixture on TV on ESPN during college basketball season, donning his alter ego, Joey Brackets.
“The rest of the year I’m just this average Joe, incredibly average,” he said.
Actually, he was vice president of communications and marketing at St. Joseph’s before retiring four years ago.
“Now, I’m just doing the basketball, which is not terrible,” he said.
Lunardi said he only posts one bracket at tournament time, warning those who fill out multiple ones that perfection is impossible to attain.
“Nobody is getting a perfect bracket,” he said, referencing Warren Buffet, who offers a $1 million prize to his employees if they can pick all 67 games correctly.
“Warren Buffet didn’t become Warren Buffet by being stupid,” Lunardi said. “You’d have an easier job of landing a plane on the sun. Think about it. Most tournament games are pretty close to a coin flip. To get them all right would be the equivalent of flipping a quarter and having it come up heads 67 straight times.”
When prodded, Lunardi said he has 279,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter).
“Including Ashley Judd,” he said. “You would think after all those years of leaving her a message, she would call back.”
No Taylor Swift?
Quipped Lunardi: “I haven’t crossed the Rubicon of Taylor yet.”