In an effort to not have my head explode when people get fired up about Lunardi and his charlatan gig at the Mothership, I'm creating this thread for anyone like minded who wants to ask "why are we even entertaining any questions about at large berth, seeding, and quadrant wins in the first week of December?"
This is an analogue to the "Announcer kvetching" thread or the reverse jinx threads. Feel free to vent your spleen and I promise we won't take you too seriously.
Go forth, and tell me what you really think of bracket prognosticators who are pedaling their wares a solid 14 weeks before Selection Sunday.
Exactly.
There's zero accountability. The "if the tournament started today..." argument is just nonsensical. It doesn't start "today," and there's no way to confirm or deny your guesses.
By the time March 12th comes around, probably everyone on this board could assemble a fairly accurate bracket if they have been paying attention. We might have some disagreement on seedings, and possibly a different team on the last line or three - but it isn't rocket science.
This idea that Lunardi has tapped into some Palantir that allows him some unfettered access to Special Knowledge is so painful to me.
And then there's the second tier of annoyance, where Joe DBR Poster sees a Lunardi post in mid-December that suggests that Duke can't/won't be a particular seed, and they come here and post in disbelief... It's all nonsense.
And there's one other aspect that really fires me up that I won't bring up. But once it has been discussed by someone else, I will unleash my diatribe.
I just like watching the games. The Duke games. The conference games. The other Big Games. The tournament games.
The banal meta discussion trying to parse how the sausage *would be made of the tournament started today* is a degree of navel-gazing that makes me a little insane.
I agree with you 100%. This whole cottage industry annoys me to no end. Control what you can control. I am generally not a big fan of polling in general but at least with political polls a campaign can theoretically use the information to target messaging, allocate resources, etc. These prove absolutely nothing. Spending time and energy at this point to apply the bracketing rules to create something resembling a bracket is completely pointless.
I recently had to explain to my 8 year old that Duke dropping slightly in the polls at this point in the season really doesn't matter. Though I was willing to rejoice with him at UNC's large drop (smart kid).
Agreed. My kids enjoy that show for some reason so I suffer through it. If I understand correctly, the CFP committee members all fly to Texas once a week to meet to put out that useless piece of information? Don't they have something better to do with their lives? The announcers even make fun of how pointless it is, especially early on. They say things like "Team X is #6, team Y is #7. They play this weekend. That will resolve who is better."
I forgot about the worst part of Lunardi and others - they give ammunition to schools that don't get their optimal outcome. Basketball coaches and fans say "Lunardi said we were going to be in so why aren't we in?" as if he has control over it.
Thanks for following through and making the thread that I just alluded to elsewhere
I will analyze the NET till my head explodes because A) I'm a weirdo who thinks it's a fun distraction and B) It has a legitimate, documented impact on our seeding come March. Joe Lunardi, however, drives me crazy. The funniest part is he isn't even that good at his job, at least based on the analysis done at BracketMatrix... he's very much mediocre amongst the sea of internet bracketologists. What he did to earn his prime spot on ESPN and have his projections parroted by the talking heads as fact is beyond me.
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I forget which year it was when the actual brackets were announced, and Lunardi wanted to argue that the committee got it wrong. Dude, your one and only job is to predict what the committee will do. If they don’t do what you predicted, YOU got it wrong, not them.
It’s like a weatherman complaining that the weather was wrong because it wasn’t what he predicted.
Exactly. And the only way a meteorologist can get it "wrong" is when s/he deals in absolutes. Which makes it confounding when they do.
Lunardi should start his own post-season three week "must watch" college basketball tournament. Then he can state with certitude what is "right" or "wrong."
Yet some on the Board keep reading the crap and bringing it up as a subject for discussion. Meh
Yes, the prediction business is nonsensical, but people buy in. Recent case in point, for weeks we've been seeing various bowl prognostications (non CFP) from "the experts" who really have "great connections" and it would appear that almost all of their predictions were wrong...I'd write more but I have to click on the article about the 21 Cars You Don't Want To Buy.
I know EXACTLY what you're talking about, but I won't mention it until ESPN actually does it.
Look, prognostication is a pastime, either by keeping idle people occupied or by having them participate in a somewhat structured activity that reduces the amount of chaos in their lives. I'll provide an analogy outside of sports.
Elsewhere on the Internet you'll find a subculture of people who have been predicting nominees and winners of the 2023 Academy Awards ceremony pretty much since the 2022 ceremony ended. Keep in mind that in many cases, these are heated arguments made about films and performances that no one has seen. And they do this every year. Like Joe Lunardi, there are people who are gainfully employed because of their ability to do this and also have a following. One of them went to Duke at the same time I did; he does other things, but so does Lunardi.
Why bother? As I said, some find it fun to look ahead and be right (or wrong), and some crave the idea of taking a free floating world of movies and giving them structure. Of the 350-plus movies that came out in a calendar year, we can determine the best ones and concern ourselves with only about 25 of them. Sound familiar?