Bracketology by Joe Lunardi

Author:Joe Lunardi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2021-01-10T05:31:14+00:00

7. A Language All Its Own

There are quite a few unique terms associated with Bracketology. Some of them originated elsewhere, but many were born right here. Let’s start with the term Bracketology itself. Mike Jensen of The Philadelphia Inquirer referenced the term way back in 1996.

We may never know who first thought up Bracketology, but I remember exactly where I was when I first heard the word bracketologist. I was at St. Bonaventure’s Reilly Center in late February, standing on the court after a game between Saint Joseph’s and the Bonnies. My cell phone rang, and it was Jensen calling from back in Philadelphia. At that time he was the Temple beat writer on his way to becoming the paper’s college columnist. He was doing a recap of the Philly-area schools and their respective chances to make the NCAA Tournament. His main question was something on the order of where Temple stood. Some thought Temple was a bubble team at that point, but I felt like the Owls were solidly in that year’s field. In his reporting Jensen said I referred to myself as a “bracketologist.” So be it. It wasn’t long before bracketologist (little b) morphed into Bracketology (capital B). It was a breakthrough of sorts.

Memories are fuzzy, but ESPN.com was already giving the brackets some in-season attention. The great Howie Schwab was formulating his own projections of the field, maybe even calling it Bracketology, though he doesn’t remember for sure. “But it really took off with Joe,” Schwab said.

Schwab was great to me when I started with ESPN.com. He was an early editor of the brackets and very supportive of my efforts, even though he may have been first to the starting line. “I’m thrilled that he turned this into a career,” Schwab said. “A lot of people do it now, but everybody knows who Joe Lunardi is. Some coaches hate his guts, but it’s an inexact science, and Joe is one of the best. It didn’t take long [for Bracketology] to be embraced.”

Rightly or wrongly, others began to associate me with the concept and the label. There were more spin-offs. Nike ran tournament commercials using the theme “Bracketville.” Folks in the media and elsewhere started bracketing non-basketball things. The New York Times writer Richard Sandomir wrote a book called The Enlightened Bracketologist. It was comprised of lists and rankings of things—like the best candy bar or the best comic strips—that didn’t have anything to do with the NCAA Tournament. I was never particularly good at the business of business, so I never made any attempt to copyright or trademark any of my Bracketology work. Other sports figures were making hay in that area with terms like “three-peat” (Pat Riley) and “Refuse to Lose” (John Calipari). In my world two things were working against any bracket-related trademarks.

One was that the term itself Bracketology was considered to be in the public domain and therefore unable to be secured by a single party. It would have been like trying to trademark the word computer.

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