After a short chat with Joe Lunardi on the phone we agree to meet at the St. Joe's gym during a Hawks basketball practice. When he arrives I am chatting with one of the assistant coaches. We shake hands and head into Phil Martelli's office where we conduct this in-depth grilling.

Joe is a great interview. His answers are fun and light-hearted. He is also very, very knowledgeable about college basketball. Joe writes a column for ESPN.com. He also has his own web site. He is known as the Doctor of Bracketology. He is THE authority when it comes to the NCAA selection process. So kick back with a cigar, some popcorn and a note pad to take notes, because this interview will teach you the how's and why's of the NCAA selection process and a little about Joe himself.

CigarBoy: Joe, let's me go to the first question here. You are known to most people around the country from ESPN.com as the "Doctor of Bracketology". Kind of walk me through how you came upon ESPN.com and how you became an expert on bracketology and how do I become an expert at bracketology.

Lunardi: Well, I'll answer the questions in reverse order CigarBoy. (In a dramatically somber voice) With years and years of intense study and preparation is how you too can become an expert in bracketology. (chuckle). Now, how did I become one? Because every year I've been fascinated by the brackets for the NCAA tournament. I like to kind of guess what the NCAA is going to do with the brackets. Then in 1994/95 season it kind of went from personal to public, I was working with Blue Ribbon Basketball Yearbook at the time, which a lot of people know. You know, the bible, real thick. In fact, for a four-year period I owned it. After Chris Wallace went to the NBA and before the current corporate ownership, there were basically two guys doing it, I was one of the two.

CigarBoy: Hey, can you get me a free one?

Lunardi: No because I'm not involved any more and they hate me.

CigarBoy: They're expensive as heck!

Lunardi: I know. They don't even send me one and I edited it for 11 years. But, to make a long story a little less longer, I said, look, the Yearbook appeals to a cult following. Most people aren't willing to spend $20-$25 bucks in the pre-season because they don't give a damn about the third guard at Montana State. They care about the top 25 of the big name schools. But the junkies, the Lunardi's, the CigarBoys, coaches, recruiters, media, broadcasters, NBA scouts....inside guys, the people for whom basketball is more a religion than a sport, they are out there, that's why we are doing this. The yearbook in the pre-season has a certain appeal but March Madness has a much broader appeal because of what? Because everybody plays a bracket pool. Everybody can't wait to get that bracket in the newspaper and fill it in. It's like an Easter egg that hasn't been colored. It's perfect. It's unsoiled because you haven't lost anything yet. No cross marks, no x-outs, no errors. As a way to try and capitalize on that mass appeal in March, where in the pre-season it's more of the cult. I thought we could capitalize on the need for information by the average person who fills out his brackets. For that 8/9 game when you are trying to pick, you know, Wisconsin against California. When it is two major teams that might have been 5th or 6th in their league that you might have only seen on TV once or twice and then only if you are a junkie and you stay up after midnight.

CigarBoy: It gets worse now. What if it's Detroit and New Mexico State?

Lunardi: Oh yeah, even harder. And this was before the explosion of the Internet. The Internet existed certainly, but ESPN.com wasn't getting 4 million hits a day in 1995. So we conceived the idea of a post-season tournament guide that would be essentially 64 pages long with a page on each and every team, sorted in the actual configuration of the bracket. We didn't just write 2 inches, but we wrote, like the pre-season's Blue Ribbon kind of report, which is 2-3,000, words a team, with all the stats. We would do a post-season recap of that team and project their passage, or not, through the brackets. The logistics of that book are not really germane to this story but it did involve, basically not sleeping selection weekend because we would do everything you can imagine between Friday morning and Sunday night keeping up with the committee. Obviously it doesn't take a bracketologist to figure out that Duke, Kansas, and Arizona are going to be in the tournament. So, you start writing about them but the skill was the bubble teams, that large pool, the mid-majors, the one bid conference because we didn't have the budget to be getting 80-90-100 teams written about for guide knowing that we were only going to be printing 64 of them. We were paying by the word essentially on a shoestring, so we had to get real good at guessing who the 64 were going to be in advance. Hence, bracketology was born. So January of that first year, which was 1995, I started seriously looking at who was going to make it and who wasn't. Then where they might be seeded, and what the match-ups might be, so that we could start writing about these teams in advance as if we knew the brackets. Of course this was before it actually happened. So, I was mostly just doing it in my basement. Every weekend, OK, what's going on in the PAC 10, what's going on in the Big 10, what's going on in the MCC and so on down the line. Is this the year the Missouri Valley gets a second team? Is this the year the Mid-American gets a second team, etc, etc, etc. How does this league stack up to that one? How does the University of Detroit as an at-large team compare to Dayton out of the Atlantic 10? That kind of debate and then you start tracking those teams. I pay much more attention to the 50-70 teams than I do the 1-50. Anybody can get that. I teach my 8 year old to bracket the first 40 teams.

CigarBoy: Where does RPI fit in? Does RPI play a big role?

Lunardi: Absolutely and they'll say it doesn't, "they" meaning the NCAA selection committee.

CigarBoy: But you watch it so it's a guide for you?

Lunardi: I watch all the ratings. I watch RPI, I watch Sagrin, any computer ratings.

CigarBoy: Do you watch Dunkel?

Lunardi: You know what? I do watch Dunkel a little bit and Dunkel is actually more involved in margin of victory than it is in wins and losses. It's a bigger percentage of their formula. Like it or not, I can show you charts of which ratings most accurately forecast the field and the seedings. The more they say that RPI doesn't matter, the longer their noses must be getting because I'm telling you, you go right on down the line and it matters a lot. Power, strength of schedule, quality of conference, non-conference strength of schedule, quality wins, all the components of the RPI are exactly what the committee looks at.

CigarBoy: I've gotten you off your explanation, but I will bring you back to RPI.

Lunardi: OK, to wrap up the history of how it happened, I'm sitting there one day doing this bracket for the benefit of Blue Ribbon, trying to determine what teams to assign to which writers, in which portions of the country. I might say Cigar Boy; you are in charge of that league. If there's a tournament team or even a remote tournament team, you've got to be following them because at 6:30 on Sunday night, of that selection weekend, I'm going to need 1,500 words and every stat.

CigarBoy: You wouldn't have enough money.

Lunardi: To pay you?

CigarBoy: Just kidding.

Lunardi: We didn't have enough money then to assign 105 teams. We wanted to do about 75 teams.

CigarBoy: Wow, not much margin for error...

Lunardi: Not much margin for error because in those days, doing that book, sending it to print on Sunday night so it could be shipped priority mail, 2-3 day delivery Monday at Noon, we couldn't mess up. The first two years we did it the worst-case scenario is, at 6:35, a team comes up on that screen that we don't have, because basically, at that point, without the resources of a large newspaper, this is like 2-3 guys in a room eating pizza and drinking Coke, for 50 hours straight not sleeping. You can't be wrong. You just can't be wrong. Like one year, Western Michigan showed up.

CigarBoy: As an at-large?

Lunardi: Yes, as an at-large and I'm telling you, they weren't in my top 65, they weren't in my top 70. I don't even know if they were in my top 80 and we went, what the heck is that? It dilutes the product and costs us money.

CigarBoy: Well obviously if you got it out the next day you used a non-union printer, that's quick!

Lunardi: (Laughing) Yes, and ironically, the guy who was printing it for us, used to be a point guard at Penn here in Philadelphia.

CigarBoy: So he had a passion for what you were doing?

Lunardi: I needed a basketball junkie to fall in love with this project who wasn't going to mind printing, binding, stitching, trimming and shipping and basically not having a life for 48 hours and is going to stay awake. I'm telling you, I'd be meeting this guy with pasted proofs in gas station parking lots. This is before .pdf files and e-mail. So I'm sitting there doing the projections that year, to try and get our assignments right and I though it would be easier if I could put this in the public domain somewhere, these bracket projections. A) I thought it would be cool; B) I selfishly thought it would enhance my name recognition; C) I thought it would sell product. People thought, I might be nuts, doing these brackets but I seem to know what I am talking about. Over the years I thought, well, if I'm good they'll see that I'm good and I'll sell more books. So I had some contacts at ESPN.com and basically, pretty much, in exchange for them printing my projections and putting on our 1-800 number, I gave them the contract. There was no money exchanged. It was a fledgling operation at our end and they were pretty new into the business, at least on the Internet side. So they were thrilled to have original content. I was thrilled to have the exposure and the thing just took off. I would put my e-mail at the bottom of the projection, and within 15 minutes of them being posted on ESPN.com, I'd get 100 e-mails. "Dear Joe - Have you ever SEEN college basketball? Did you know that Iowa State is the best team in the Big 8 this year? How could you seed them, blah, blah, blah". I once got a phone call from the Lt. Governor of a state, who I will not mention, in the Big 12, wondering how I could have missed the state university school from my projection. AS IF I really had a vote on the committee!! So he makes his case about coach-this and player-that and he said the Governor asked me to call you. He's real interested in your response.

CigarBoy: Let's see Big 12? How about Rick Perry from Texas?

Lunardi: No... he said he's very interested in your opinion. They are in the polls, like 21st, but you're not putting them in the bracket. I said I have two answer for your Governor: it's obviously a pretty slow day in the State House when you are worried about what I'm saying and your strength of schedule stinks, you don't have any quality wins, and you can't win a road game. These are all the things the committee looks at when they are trying to select. So tell the Governor, tell the Chancellors, tell the Coaches to schedule some tough road games and win a couple of them and then I'll put you in the bracket. But it went from there. Eventually, ESPN saw that site was getting traffic and that people were responding to me in e-mail and that I was doing chat every week and getting as many questions in an hour as Dick Vitale and Michael Jordan when they did chats. I'm not saying that bracketology is as famous at Dick Vitale and Michael Jordan, but I'll tell you what, the first Friday in March it is. I could literally do a chat any of those days of championship week, and I would get 500-600 questions an hour, every hour for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. People can't get enough of it. Finally, it incrementally increased every year and eventually there were some compensation arranged beyond the trade agreement I had with the folks in Bristol who've been very good to me. When I sold my interest in Blue Ribbon a few years ago, it was because we started having a family, I needed a little bit more of life.

CigarBoy: Your wife didn't want to hear your excuses that week. Is she a huge sports fan?

Lunardi: Not a huge sports fan but she does love college basketball. We met here at St. Joe's. So she gets it. I think she's a little curious why I do brackets in October but it really doesn't heat up until after Christmas. Like from Christmas to Easter, I'm a useless husband.

CigarBoy: Now if you did brackets and smelled like perfume, then she'd really be...

Lunardi: Yeah, exactly. No threat of that happening!

CigarBoy: (chuckling) OK, let's talk about the whole process now. Clearly, the RPI is important, strength of schedule is important. There seems to move towards RPI in the last 3-4 years more than maybe 10 years ago. Everyone's talking about strength of schedule/scheduling. Ten years ago, scheduling was a lot easier for mid-majors.

Lunardi: Correct. Because now the majors are trying to kind of isolate their own power ratings by playing each other, and they play low majors. They don't want to take chances in the middle because bad things can happen.

CigarBoy: Let me stop you there. Is it because they don't want bad things to happen or is it because of budgetary problems within a school where they need to generate money at home games to pay for things like Title IX. Does that come into it or is it more of the other?

Lunardi: It's got to be both. You look at schools that play....Syracuse one year didn't leave the Carrier Dome until the 2nd or 3rd week in January. They fatten up on the Colgates and the Sienas of the world that they can get as an easy bus ride, then sell 20,000 tickets and never leave campus.

CigarBoy: What's the going rate now? What are they paying, $40,000?

Lunardi: I don't know. I'm not ducking the question it's just not something I have any involvement with. Obviously it's enough to get the schools to come and it's enough to incent the Steven F. Austins of the world to never play a home game in the pre-league season and to just take paycheck after paycheck on the road. In my old Blue Ribbon days when I was typing in these schedules, I'd say, oh my gosh... how can they survive that? But the cash register is going cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.

CigarBoy: But they can't survive without doing it?

Lunardi: Correct. They know in their league, let's say they are going to get 8-10 home games and that's their home schedule and the rest is paydays. I understand that but my business isn't telling teams how to schedule. My business is saying what the effect those schedules will have on the seeding process. I'm not an Athletic Director.

CigarBoy: So you've answered my question. You think it's multiple factors. Back to the selection committee, they haven't announced it. They've just quietly slid that way?

Lunardi: I find that each chairman has been different. There's been some great ones and some so-so ones, in my view from the tone that they've set. While they may study it for a few days in March and they have staff, printouts, and caterers, room service and all that stuff, I'm starting after the last bowl game in January. I'm doing it every day. I guarantee when they go into that room, that used to be Kansas City now Indianapolis, there's not a person in that room that knows more than I do. They may by the end of the weekend, but when they get there they don't. They can't because they have jobs, they have lives, and they have conferences to commission or athletic departments to direct.

CigarBoy: How is Fowler doing?

Lunardi: Ah, I'm good with Lee. I think Mike Tranghese was very good. I don't think people liked the message that the committee sent out under Tranghese, which is, power, power, power, but at least the message was consistent. The message was, forget about RPI for a second, because there is committees who sometimes go straight down the RPI list with seeding and selection. Others times you can see it's in the mix but it's not everything. I think we are swinging a bit away from the RPI and looking more at the components and the ingredients of RPI. The committee generally stays a little bit ahead of the public. As we get educated on something, they are a year or two ahead of that. It could be strength of schedule, it could be road record, it could be performance down the stretch, how they did in their conference tournament, so on and so one. Here's the way I look at it; this is where I think the committee is. In my private conversations with some committee members off the record, it has been shared with me for 2 of the last 3 years, the nitty gritty report that the committee members have in their hands. So the columns of data they have in their hands selection weekend, I've seen it. I know that the columns on my laptop are the same. We might interpret the data differently, me or a committee member, or you, or a coach, but at least we have the ingredients.

CigarBoy: Are you sworn to secrecy or is that something you can spill what it is?

Lunardi: It's available on my website in a nitty gritty chart. They say in their manual what they look at, but you have to combine a lot of sources of data to get it all on one piece of paper. Every Sunday night from January on, I take 5 hours and replicate their chart. That's why my brackets on Monday morning are, I don't mean to be conceited but, they are the best that can be done and it's not because I'm the smartest, but I because I know nobody's putting that time in. Then the experience of . . . I can look at a data line and look at all right, here's State U, here's their league record, here's their standing, how they are doing now, their non-conference, their road record. I almost have an intuitive feel for how that all mixes up. I've probably done a dozen serious brackets a year for 8,9,10 years. I've done it a couple of hundred times what they only do once a year and I do it as seriously every week as they do it one time. I have to look at all the conference conflicts, all the bracketing rules, new regionalization procedures that were put into effect last year to keep seeds closer to home. I keep an atlas over my desk for mapping.

CigarBoy: Does that throw you a little bit?

Lunardi: No actually, it helped me. It was more work but any change that requires analysis raised my level of expertise closer to the committee and away from the average fan because the average fan can't put the time in to do that study. Basically, I'm doing a term paper every week on the brackets. Most people aren't that crazy. Most people would rather rent a movie or something. Some people collect stamps, some people hunt, play cards, some people cheat on their wives, I do brackets, that's my thing. Where I would say the committee is right now, and Lee, and Craig Thompson, the immediate predecessor, they were both on the committee when I think Tranghese who's not very popular outside the east, but is a very straight shooter and I respect that. You may not like what he said but it's out there and it's not double talk like from some chairmen in the past. C. M. Newton was a great chairman. The couple of times I had the opportunity to speak to him, he answered my questions. I said, you said this but your principles and procedures say that. He'd say, "well yeah, off the record we had to consider A, B and C." There's definitely horse trading that goes on but I think by and large the level of scrutiny of the process now lead by the media and people like us, they are much more accountable. Like the number of teams that get seriously considered and placed in a bracket that shouldn't compared to even 5 years ago, has shrunk from maybe 3 or 4 a year to 0 or 1. There's just too much information available. Too much of a watchdog effect. Five, ten years ago they didn't have people like us. Here's what they do at the end. Every year, the first 50 by selection weekend are pretty easy.

CigarBoy: 34 are coming out of conferences, 30 are automatic?

Lunardi: Yeah, 30 are automatic, 35, 31 if you count the play in game. So 30 automatic, 34 at-large. I would say in a typical year, 25 to 30 of the at-larges are no brainers. It's a question of where you are going to seed them, but let's forget about that for now, because frankly, their team patterns really threw me for a couple of years until the last Tranghese year and I've been able to pretty much figure it out since then. When they really started to emphasis power conferences, power schedule, and power RPI. That's why Gonzaga got screwed last year. There's no way they were 6th last year. A 6th seed would suggest that on the committee's s-curve, they were between 21 and 24. The committee is allowed to move a team up or down one line to avoid conference conflict, playing your own league, home court disadvantages and that kind of thing. So by rule, Gonzaga had to be, if they were in the 6th line, on the NCAA's s-curve, no better than a 5 seed and no worse than a 7. So those are slots 17 through 28. I don't think there's anyway you could have realistically watched that team last year 10, 12, 20 times and said they weren't one of the top 10 or 12 teams in the country. They were clearly better than a 6th seed. My eyes tell me that but in a way they've kind of backed themselves into a corner with rewarding power teams for power conferences. Gonzaga doesn't benefit from that. The RPI: should by my rule of thumb give you the menu of teams that should be considered. Like if a team is 110, too many of the factors that add up to their record just aren't of NCAA caliber. So the difference between team number 50 and team number 110 is significant. Significant enough so that 110 is in the NIT. Just because they have a good enough record. A lot of teams at 110 are teams from great conferences with loosing league records who've just fallen and they don't make the NIT because they might be 14 and 16 or something. But, by and large, the difference between 50 and 110 is enough to distinguish those teams without going any further. Now the difference between 40 and 50 is the whiff of a hand. We are talking thousandths of a decimal point. So here's where it gets serious. The RPI gives you the names of teams for consideration. The 40 or 50 teams that should be seriously considered for the 34 at-large positions. I'm say that of those 40 or 50, 25-30 are no brainers....they're in. The last 4,5 sometimes 7 or 8 at-large spots, that's where it gets tricky. That's where you have to look beyond the menu of the RPI. The RPI gives you the choices. It doesn't tell you what to order.

CigarBoy: Let me build on that. Where in the last 4 to 5 teams, we've got the RPIs. We are looking beyond that. We are looking at the last 10 games, looking at road wins? Do you look at that?

Lunardi: When I can't decide. When I am at the very, very end. and I've got 5 teams for 2 spots or 3 teams for 1 spot, however it adds up. Every year the slate is a little bit different. The calculus is there's always a couple more teams than there are spots. That's why we have angry coaches, right? Nobody ever says, boy, they did a great job and I think all the appropriate teams got in and we didn't deserve it. OK, THAT never happens. At that moment I ask myself 3 questions, and the track records really bares this out in the last two or three years. 1) Who did you beat, 2) When did you beat them, and 3) Where did you beat them. Quality wins, or sometimes what they would call good losses. Like if Xavier goes on the road and loses to Arizona by 3 at the buzzer, that's pretty darn good, right? You can't fault them for that. When did you beat them: in other words, Ball State, last year in November beat UCLA and Kansas in Maui and then lost in the final to Duke. They beat two of the three heavies that they played. They beat UCLA and Kansas, I'm certain of that. I forget whom they lost to in the final. Well that was in November, on a neutral court. Great wins for Ball State. You can't get any better than that. Sure they are playing at Pauley or Lawrence. Then they come home, they get in league play and as good as they were...and that's a talented team at Ball State, good coach Tim Buckley, quality veterans, they came in here in the NIT and just pretty much whacked St. Joes. They're just good. Arguable the most talented team that wasn't in the tournament last year. I think they lost 5 games in their league and then they didn't even make it to the final of the MAC. So the committee is sitting here thinking, they have these great wins, but it's March 10th now. They did this on November 20th, almost 4 months ago. Is it reasonable to say that this team is as good today when it lost to Central Michigan, let's say, on a neutral court in the conference tournament? I don't know if that's whom they lost to, I don't remember but it was someone at that level. They didn't loose in their conference tournament to Indiana. They lost to a team they presumably should have beaten if they are serious about being a tournament team. So the committee is saying, they were great four months ago but what about today. That's why all three questions are essential. Who did you beat: Ball State had that in their favor. Two big scouts. Where did you beat them: Was there home cooking or neutral court environment just like the tournament? Probably pretty sterile, 2:00 in the afternoon, unbiased officials, and neutral crowd all that stuff. So two of the three questions you should pick Ball State. When did you beat them: Sorry Mr. and Mrs. Ball State we don't have anyway of proving you are the same team today as you were four months ago. That's because you've lost 5 of your last 8 in a mid-major league.

CigarBoy: So did Butler.

Lunardi: Well in Butler's case...everyone points at Butler. Butler is a team that I missed. It was interesting that the NIT ending up carrying them in, I think, a first round game or maybe a second round game.

CigarBoy: They beat Bowling Green at Hinkle.

Lunardi: And then they played Ball State. No wait, St. Joe's played Ball State.

CigarBoy: No, Butler played Syracuse and lost by like 3 points.

Lunardi: All right, so forget it. Here was Butler's problem. Butler had the win part fine because they won like 13 straight.

CigarBoy: Until they got in the conference and played Wright State.

Lunardi: OK, there you have it. Anyway did great. They're rolling. I think they had the one big win early. Didn't they beat Indiana?

CigarBoy: Indiana at Indiana, no at Conseco, neutral court.

Lunardi: All right and they beat Purdue.

CigarBoy: Purdue at Purdue and Ball State at Ball State when Ball State was ranked.

Lunardi: OK, but the rest of their non-conference schedule, was ranked in the 300's so the committee was basically saying, not good enough. Now, I missed on Butler. I've missed one team each of the last three or four years.

CigarBoy: Let me ask you this. If Butler takes out one of their cupcakes like Belmont University and sticks in a non-D1 team so it doesn't effect their RPI at all....

Lunardi: A lot of those schools are going that way.

CigarBoy: The Horizon League is recommending they do it now.

Lunardi: And I can't disagree with that.

CigarBoy: Would they have gotten in, you think?

Lunardi: Well, I don't know how one less cupcake would have affected the formula.

CigarBoy: Well let's talk about two of those cupcakes.

Lunardi: But you know it's a trade-off because if they get too many non-D1's, then the win total goes down, because the non-D1 wins don't count on the nitty gritty report. They could be 22-6 with 3 non-D1 opponents and it shows up at 19-6, and 19 isn't quite as eye catching as 22. So there's always a trade-off.

CigarBoy: So you would say for the teams that are doing that, it's a sound strategy if you just stick one in there.

Lunardi: If it's July and you have one game left on your schedule and your non-conference league is soft, you are probably better off at that point, to either schedule way up so a loss helps you or schedule so far down that there's absolutely no way you can lose the game.

CigarBoy: Up or down.

Lunardi: Right and the mid-major plague has been made even worse, forced by the whole exempted tournament situation and the fact that the power conferences know how to build the numbers.

CigarBoy: Which way are the trends going? You say, "I'm seeing trends." What are the trends?

Lunardi: The trends are better to play great teams and lose than play cupcakes and win. Generally speaking. There's no question that that message has been sent. I think we now have the committee studying and considering creating a road RPI or a road-neutral RPI.

CigarBoy: So they are finally looking at updating the RPI after 20 years?

Lunardi: It's been updated quite often actually. It use to be, your win/loss record was worth a third, your strength of schedule was a third and your opponent's strength of schedule was another third. Now I think it's 25%, 50%, 25%. Your strength of schedule counts twice as much as your own record but it doesn't break down on the road and that's where the mid-majors might be able to get back into the game a little bit. What they are saying is, of Syracuse has 20 wins, they scheduled 10 of them before Christmas, and they don't have to walk past their own locker room. So what's their RPI away from home? Or is there a way to weight the formula so that road neutral counts more than home. They did break the RPI into conference and non-conference a few years ago. So let's break it down another segment.

CigarBoy: Is that something that would be an announcement or will they just quietly do that?

Lunardi: They'll quietly do it and we'll know it after the fact.

CigarBoy: Wow...

Lunardi: The RPI formula that many people replicate is theoretically not public. Many people calculate RPI on the Internet and other places. There's only one guy that has it right.

CigarBoy: Who's that?

Lunardi: Collegiate Basketball News in Indianapolis. It's not CBS Sportsline, it's not Joe Lunardi, it's not ESPN.com, it's not College Insider, or this or that. It's Collegiate Basketball News. He's got it because I have sat with the nitty gritty chart after the tournament begins and I've looked at the RPI's that they have listed for teams and I've compared it to each of the people that produce duplicate RPI's, and there's only one that's exact, and it's year after year. Not only does he have the RPI, but he's got the adjusted RPI which is suppose to be even more secret because they bonus and penalty points for good wins and bad losses. It's not like he's close; he is it, exact. So I use that data in doing my projections.

CigarBoy: Would you say he's got some inside information? How else would he come up with stuff like that?

Lunardi: Well, I think what happens is, after the season, the NCAA sends to all its members it's final RPI for the prior year. It doesn't tell you the formula but it's sends you the raw data. So, if he looks at that, if any mathematician or someone who's really good with statistics and people THINK I'm a statistician, I'm not. I just read them and draw conclusions because I'm an analyst not a statistician. He can say at the end, all right, here's how they had it, here's what I missed this year so in that column, ...13, my weighting must be off, because he runs the numbers on the spreadsheet and sells it to correspond exactly. At worst he's one year behind whatever they're doing.

CigarBoy: If someone's out there, let's say Joe Musketeer from Xavier, they want to start getting a handle on this stuff now, what do they need to do?

Lunardi: Well, they need to read my column. There you go.

CigarBoy: Will that tell them everything they need or should they do a little research on their own?

Lunardi: That depends on how much time they have. If they want to know, at any given point of the season, after January 1st, within one line where their team is going to be seeded, they've got no better place. Because not only am I getting 99% of the teams correct, I'm getting 80-85% of them at or within one line of their actual seeding. The way they can do it, in other words if I say, Xavier is a 9 in the west, well saying they are in the west is kind of random but if I say they are a 9, the chance that they are going to be an 8 and a 10 on selection Sunday is like way better than betting a horse or playing a number, or guessing on your anniversary gift for your wife (chuckling). It's a darn good chance and it's a really good chance by the time the bracket gets to February/March. Like the one I put up for Midnight Madness that's up there now is really throwing a dart blindly into the air. But by February, we are pretty locked in.

CigarBoy: When you throw your October dart in the air, how do you know who is going to win the Missouri Valley Conference?

Lunardi: I don't, any more than the guy writing the Sporting News preview on that league for that magazine. But you mostly look at who's got what coming back and I also look at seedings from the prior year and performance in the conference tournament. I do a little more layers but like I probably did that October bracket in a couple of hours. I would never wing it in January/February/March because there is real data to look at. By January 15th, everyone's played a dozen or more games. They are in their league schedules and because of that, they get forced to go on the road so you can kind of separate the December frauds. That's the great thing about league play. They do make you play in the other school's gym.

CigarBoy: When you don't have your mortar cap on as the Doctor of Bracketology, you are doing color for St. Joe's. How long have you been doing that?

Lunardi: I started by filling in for somebody who was sick one night in '90 or '91 and I became a regular a year or two after that. I guess I'm going on 11 or 12 years, the last 4 or 5 being every game, home and away. We use to share the broadcast duties; a number of us in Philly, with a lot of the teams and each school kind of have their own network. It use to be like there was a big 5 pack so all of us had to pinch hit and do roundabout assignments.

CigarBoy: Then you are on Phil Martelli's TV show.

Lunardi: Yeah, it's so bad you have to laugh. That's our motto. You should be on.

CigarBoy: I know! I have a standing invitation from Phil.

Lunardi: Oh, because it sucks. You'd be great.

CigarBoy: I'd be great? (laughing)

Lunardi: We all.... I suck at it. You gotta come

CigarBoy: We almost worked it in last year. I'm in. It could be my big show biz break you know.

Lunardi: Oh Cigar Boy, we are talking bottom of the barrel, Wayne's World of college basketball.

CigarBoy: That's me. I'm bottom of the barrel. I'll fit right in!

Lunardi: You're bottom, I'm the barrel. Or maybe I'm the bottom and you're the barrel.

CigarBoy: That could be it. Now, the University also employs you in communications? What do you do with St. Joe's University?

Lunardi: I hate to ever admit this in any public interview but I do have a real job and it has nothing to do with basketball, except that I work at a university that has basketball. I'm the Assistant Vice President for University Communications. I do primarily enrollment and alumni publications. The kinds we all get from our schools to either enroll our sons and daughters or to write a check. I do media relations, academic communications, where we place faculty experts. If there's a war in the Middle East, we've got professors that know this or that, that we get placed in the media and I write and communicate to the President just like you'd see on the West Wing or any of those White House shows. When he goes somewhere and has to give a big speech, or making a policy statement or announcing a new building, or tuition hike.

CigarBoy: When he has to stand up in front of people and do something you might write that.

Lunardi: Of course they write things on their own, but on those occasions when he might need assistance in crafting an idea, we would certainly be prepared to help. I'm the PR guy for the school. Not part of sports information. They are over here in athletics. Now we are such a small place, those guys and I talk everyday. The only reason I'm involved in athletics is because I like it. I don't get paid for this, I just like it.

CigarBoy: Let me ask you this. I know you get accused of being a little bit of a homer when you are bracketing for the A-10 and for St. Joes. What do you do to step back and take your emotions out of it and stop flapping your Hawk wings for a while? What can you do to try to be objective? Do you go back to hard-core numbers with a little bit of intuition?

Lunardi: You can never take the names off the jersey whether you are analyzing your own school or somebody else's because the guys in the committee room know the word Duke means something. The word Long Beach State might mean something else. I did track for a while only looking at the numbers and not the school names. It doesn't work. Because there is an intuitive feel to it. A lot of guys can do the numbers and not the analysis. A lot of guys can do analysis but they don't understand the numbers. I try to combine the two and I'll say this about St. Joe's, I bleed crimson red. I'm no different than anybody else. I'm a passionate fan. I just happen to have a keyboard and an e-mail address at ESPN. I love my school as much as everybody else, but last year the bracketology site at ESPN got 6.2 million hits. I was on ESPN radio 60 - 70 times. I did studio for ESPN news throughout championship weekend of the NCAA tournament. They aren't paying me to do that so I can say nice things about St. Joe's. As I say on the ESPN radio shows and other interviews, do I give St. Joe's a better seed? My answer is always the same; I'd put my mother in the NIT if she had a horse crap schedule. My ego is stroked by getting it right, not by helping St. Joe's.

CigarBoy: Do you say crappy on the radio?

Lunardi: No, probably not. My point is, I've been doing this for 7 or 8 years now. In that period of time, the Hawks have made the tournament twice - in '97 and '01. In both cases, I got their seed exactly right. I didn't over seed them; I didn't under seed them. There was no bias there. To have gotten it right, means I analyzed SJU as well as it could be analyzed. As well as the other 63. In '97 I had them as a 4, they were a 4. In '01, I had them as a 9, and they were a 9. I actually thought they'd be a little better in '01 because that was the shift towards power, power, power but I had gotten wind from some committee members prior to the brackets being announced so I had a hunch that it wasn't going to be a good year for the non-football schools. That year, St. Joseph's was the highest seeded non-big six school in the bracket. They just weren't given top half of the bracket seeds to the non-football schools. It just wasn't happening and frankly hasn't really happened since, with one or two exceptions. So, do I want St. Joe's to win? Do I want St. Joe's to have a great seed? Absolutely just as much as Chris Berman wants his school to do well, and Dick Vitale wants his school to do well, and every other media member. Because unlike covering a pro team where I think you can cover them with less bias, when you are covering your own school, and you are living it every day for 3-4 months, it's hard to be unbiased but not when it comes to filling in the brackets. Like, I can root for them when the game is going on, but when I sit down on Sunday night...if I put St. Joe's as a 6 seed when they are really on the bubble, people are going to laugh at me. My credibility is shot. If anything, I'd go in the other direction.

CigarBoy: Do you find that you are a little more accurate with the A10 schools because you see them all the time or doesn't that really help you? Can you look at the statistics of a Missouri Valley school and be as accurate as you are with any A10 school?

Lunardi: Obviously, I know the personnel and the style of play better of the teams that I see more frequently. I'm in every A-10 gym during the season broadcasting games. The nights that I have games to broadcasts, I'm usually only seeing one game and that's an A10 game. The nights that I'm at home, with my dish, I might be jumping in on a half dozen games from all over the place. So yeah, I know them more but I don't think it affects much. I've been wrong in A10 seeding as much as anybody else.

CigarBoy: Let's talk a little bit about the A-10 trips. Best place in the A10 to watch a game?

Lunardi: That's a good question. I'm trying to put myself in a fan's seat. When you are on the radio, generally, you have pretty good seats, although there are a couple of places (chuckle)

CigarBoy: I'm talking the atmosphere, the college experience.

Lunardi: I would have to say you have to give two answers, one for the big arenas and one for the small because you really can't duplicate a band-box gym in terms of noise, intimacy, closeness, all that stuff. When this place is rockin', here at the fieldhouse, it's as good as it gets. It's still not the Palestra but that's nobody's home court because the Palestra even though it seats 9,000, it feels and sounds like it seats 3,000 and you are right on the court so there's no comparison there. Among the larger arenas in the league, I'd have to say Dayton because I think the fans are the most knowledgeable, they turn out even when the team is so-so, they are respectful of the opposition. They'll cheer a Marvin O'Connor if he goes off in a 6-8 minute stretch and beats them, and by the same token, they bleed Flyer red and blue. St. Bonaventure is incredibly difficult to win at because it's borderline hostile but I don't know if that makes it the best. When UMass was great, in Calpari years it was terrific. Temple's pretty sterile even though it's big. I've only been to Xavier a couple of times. It's certainly very good, beautiful facility but it's a little too corporate for my taste where Dayton feels a little more collegiate feel from me probably just because it's older and they weren't into luxury boxes then. I know they are building them. Who am I missing? You have got to see a Dayton/Xavier game. Have you seen one?

CigarBoy: Yeah, at Xavier.

Lunardi: I'd like to see a Xavier/UC game.

CigarBoy: That too. They are both equally as loud.

Lunardi: Let's see, GW nothing, Duquesne nothing

CigarBoy: Hey, Rhode Island has a new arena now, I've been in it and it is nice.

Lunardi: OK, but the sound still stinks.

CigarBoy: Richmond?

Lunardi: Yeah I was there once, it was pretty good. They had one of the best signs I ever saw (laughing). Talk about a funny story. One year I think Phil made a mistake. He happened to be interviewed by local news on Election Day - Bush/Gore. Not as the basketball coach at St. Joe's, he was just coming out of a polling booth and there happened to be a guy and you know cameras - he's a magnet. He was asked, "Who'd you vote for and why?" Well Phil said, "I voted for Al Gore!" Next he was asked, "What do you think of Governor Bush?" "I think he's a dweeb," said Phil. Needless to say, Bush is the next President, however that was done, but boy did it get us some good fun around Hawk Talk that year. Collateral though...a year and a half after the fact, Richmond wasn't even in our league when Phil made the comment about George Bush. We go down there to play Richmond last year and some fans right behind the St. Joe's bench had a sign that said, "Hey Phil, George Bush's approval rating is 70% your RPI 93." It was awesome. He went over and shook their hands and said, "That's pretty good. That's pretty good."

CigarBoy: I think this has been a groundbreaking interview about the NCAA selection process!

Lunardi: Well it has been fun if nothing else. You'll have to come by at halftime in Dayton and we can do a halftime interview!

CigarBoy: Joe, thanks and I will see you in Dayton!

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