It’s about this time of 12 months when Joe Lunardi will get texts from his friends at Llanerch Nation Membership, in Havertown, Pennsylvania, that the golf season isn’t far off.
Lunardi isn’t too busy to reply, however he’s too busy to play as a result of he’s the person behind bracketology, the pervasive American sports activities obsession that focuses on the 68 groups within the NCAA males’s basketball match.
He’s busy from mid-February by Choice Sunday till the championship recreation on April 7, offering ESPN and its viewers the nuts-and-bolts info to make their picks or at the least take part on the water cooler/social media dialog.
Bracketology was born due to Lunardi’s quizzical nature as a part-time basketball author for the Delaware County Every day Instances within the Eighties.
Lunardi, 64, of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, coated Philadelphia’s Massive 5 faculties when hoops-wild Philly-area readers had been searching for info on the match probabilities of their favourite groups.
“I used to be monitoring the locals and their match prospects in a method that no person was doing on the time,” Lunardi stated. “And I used to be studying concerning the choice course of, how groups would get seeded, and the place they might be positioned. I used to be a bracket nerd earlier than there was such a factor. I used to be fascinated with the match.”
A 1982 Saint Joseph’s College graduate who labored on the faculty till 2019, most lately as director of selling and broadcast providers, Lunardi credit former athletic director Don DiJulia for introducing him to essentially the most applicable workers members of the NCAA to “at the least ask good questions.”
He jokingly added: “If Al Gore doesn’t invent the web I don’t know if bracketology turns into a factor.”
Lunardi, who carries a USGA Handicap Index of 14.3, ramped up the training curve by his work overlaying faculty basketball as a pupil after which at Blue Ribbon Faculty Basketball Yearbook, the go-to supply for the sport when printed supplies dominated basketball protection. It stays a revered handbook in basketball circles.
A component-owner within the enterprise, Lunardi turned its managing editor in 1991. Lunardi known as the statistics and knowledge format with out photographs “meat and potatoes and extra potatoes.”
“A superb a part of me misses the natural enjoyable of these days,” he stated.
He began writing sports activities as a freshman at St. Joe’s and acquired the basketball beat “as a result of the sports activities editor was a junior and he was the drummer at dwelling video games, and he wished to do this and drink beer greater than have the beat.”
That blossomed into working Palestra doubleheaders in his freshman 12 months when the College of Pennsylvania superior to the Closing 4. In his junior 12 months (1981), St. Joe’s made a outstanding run by the NCAA Match and beat No. 1 DePaul earlier than dropping to Bob Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers. The Hawks had been one recreation away from enjoying within the Closing 4 on the Spectrum in Philadelphia, the place he labored as part of the media operations workforce and watched Indiana beat North Carolina for the title.
ESPN and CBS led the TV cost in match protection and the Bristol, Connecticut, outfit reached out to Lunardi to develop into a contributor to ESPN in 1996, which led to the beginning of the time period bracketology.
In ensuing years, tv protection of March Insanity and the consumption of knowledge on-line fueled the expansion in curiosity in what was then a 64-team subject.
ESPN and CBS led the TV cost in match protection and the Bristol, Connecticut, outfit reached out to Lunardi to develop into a contributor to ESPN in 1996, which led to the beginning of the time period bracketology.
“There’s a debate with Mike Jensen and me,” Lunardi stated of the now-retired award-winning Philadelphia Inquirer author. “He claims that I stated it first and I declare he wrote it first.”
Lunardi referred to himself as a bracketologist in an interview relating to Temple basketball and continued: “(Jensen) wrote so-called or self-proclaimed bracketologist and that turned bracketology.”
Annually from the day after the Tremendous Bowl till the top of the NCAA Match, Lunardi is on-call as an analyst for ESPN as a full-time worker for bracketology. Unbeknownst to a majority of hoop followers, he didn’t begin full-time standing till he retired from his longtime place at St. Joe’s in 2019 at age 60.
“I’ve my quarter-hour of fame,” Lunardi stated. “It lasts from the Tremendous Bowl to Choice Sunday and that’s excellent. Throughout these weeks, I don’t get a time off or many hours off. Nevertheless it certain makes the beginning of golf season that rather more pleasant.”
He’s typically acknowledged in airports and eating places when the TVs are catching each minute of the match.
When his oldest daughter was in faculty, she’d name him after watching ESPN’s protection and seeing a workforce’s résumé on a graphic with the phrases: In response to Lunardi – fill within the clean of the workforce’s possibilities. “She’s stated, ‘Dad, they modified your title once more to In accordance To,’” Lunardi stated with a smile.
A “sneaky, quick and annoying” hockey participant as a child, his love of basketball “was most likely an unintended consequence of deciding to go to St. Joe’s,” he stated.
For many years, Lunardi has been the colour analyst of the St. Joe’s radio community for basketball, and he was acknowledged for his 1,two hundredth recreation final season.
After CBS airs its “One Shining Second” video to wrap up the match, Lunardi is considering his two or 3 times every week visits to Llanerch within the spring, summer season and fall.
“I’m sneaky lengthy, the white tees usually are not an issue for me,” Lunardi joked. “I’m about 20 classes away from bogey golf. I’m a 14. At our membership, I’m useless on bogey golf.”
He has been texting along with his associates since February concerning the begin of the golf season and loves the 4 p.m. “stroll 9 after which have a burger and a Pepsi” rounds.
If he had 5 programs to play in 5 days, he’d select Pine Valley, Merion (“simply because”), Applebrook, Huntingdon Valley Nation Membership (“extremely arduous and extremely nice”) and Atlantic Metropolis Nation Membership (“I really like the inlet holes”).
Lunardi has by no means damaged 80 however has shot 82 twice – as soon as on the Springhaven Membership and as soon as at Applebrook Golf Membership. His lowest spherical at Llanerch is 84 and he shot 89 at Merion East at a Coaches vs. Most cancers occasion by rolling in a 30-foot par putt on the treacherous thirteenth gap. Lastly, he shot 90 at Pine Valley as soon as in his three visits.
The enduring structure in Clementon, New Jersey, is his No. 1 Philadelphia-area course.
“Everyone’s enjoying for second after Pine Valley,” Lunardi stated. “It’s in its personal tier. Each gap is a postcard.”
If he had 5 programs to play in 5 days, he’d select Pine Valley, Merion (“simply because”), Applebrook, Huntingdon Valley Nation Membership (“extremely arduous and extremely nice”) and Atlantic Metropolis Nation Membership (“I really like the inlet holes”).
Submit-round there’s more likely to be sports activities discuss and it’ll spin towards bracketology.
Lunardi, who obtained a letter from the Oxford English Dictionary in London about 10 years in the past to verify that bracketology had been added, was casually happy by the information.
“One thing’s acquired to go on all people’s tombstones,” Lunardi stated. “I hope mine is sufficiently big for all these letters.”
Prime: Joe Lunardi. Picture: Courtesy ESPN
© 2025 International Golf Submit LLC
