"He's awesome, baby!" is how college basketball luminary Dick Vitale described Joe Lunardi, the man Vitale called the "Michelangelo of Bracketology."
Although "bracketology" isn't listed in the Penn Course Register, it is a weekly feature on ESPN.com that receives over 10 million hits per college basketball season. Yesterday, Lunardi, its creator, spoke about bracketology's genesis to a group of about 40 people as part of the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program's "Lesson in Leadership" series.
Bracketology is a science in which Lunardi uses complex data analysis and formulas in order to seed the 65 teams in the NCAA men's basketball tournament weeks and months before the actual seeding occurs. Last year, Lunardi correctly predicted 64 out of the 65 teams that made the field.
"I fantasize about being chairman of the NCAA selection committee," Lunardi said, adding that the official selection committee "studies [seeding the field] for a week while I study it for 12. Right now, I know more about [it] than they do."
Although the humorously self-deprecating Lunardi spoke mostly of college basketball, the overarching themes of his speech were the importance of passion both in the workplace and in leadership.
"I would do it for nothing," Lunardi said about his work in college basketball, adding, "We should all strive for that in whatever we do."
Lunardi's ability to rise to the top of the college basketball scene inspired many in attendance.
Wharton senior David Lerman was as equally impressed by what Lunardi had to say about leadership as he was by Lunardi's college basketball acumen.
"I was coming from two different sides," Lerman said. "It is always interesting to see how a leader finds success -- that part of his talk satisfied one side of the brain. And the other side of the brain got to listen to some pretty amazing sports analysis."
Lunardi's form of leadership is not the traditional type, though. "Joe Lunardi is a leader in his own sense [in] that he's taken a passion and created a vocation from that passion," said Ben Cruse, College senior and Fox student director.
Executive Director of Fox Joe Tierney, a long-time friend of Lunardi, added to the praise of Lunardi.
"He is an innovator in sports media. Pretty soon, when people think about the media and the NCAA Tournament, they're going to think of three names: [CBS men's college basketball analyst] Billy Packer, Dick Vitale and Joe Lunardi," he said.
This acclaim is especially impressive considering that bracketology is only a small part of what Lunardi does. He regularly appears on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN.com, and is an analyst for Saint Joseph's University men's basketball broadcasts. In addition to all this, he is the assistant vice president for university communications at St. Joe's, the job that he says "pays the mortgage."
While it may be difficult for many to understand how Lunardi has the time for all of his basketball commitments, he simply says, "A vocation without an avocation is an empty barrel," adding that "I'm really just a basketball fan that's taken the word to the extreme."
