Those loyal to the Stomp the Lunatic Contest know my opinions of the Bracketology pages.  For those who don’t, I feel they do a lot of teams a dis-service.  My only hopes is that the Selection Committee ignores these folks – but it has got to be hard to not let it influence you.  If Joe Lunardi from ESPN and Jerry Palm from CBS both say that Providence should be one of the last bubble teams in, how much does that make the committee think – maybe they’re right.  If a committee member is questioning what is the right ranking for Ohio State and sees both “experts” listing the Buckeyes as a 6 seed – does that influence the ranking.

I totally think it is entertaining to read – and these guys put themselves on the line as they put their rankings out there for everyone to see.  And in Lunardi’s case, you can even go backwards in the season and see previous rankings.  But then they make these statements that just make my blood boil.

Lunardi is the one who pushed my buttons last night.  When Joe put his last update on Thursday onto the ESPN page, he had the following rankings:

1 – Arizona, Florida, Syracuse, Wichita State

2 – Kansas, Duke, Wisconsin, Creighton

After Virginia’s dominating victory against Syracuse, there was a blurb from ESPN that it looked like Kansas would move up to the top line.   That seems fair enough.  Then came Oklahoma State’s upset of the Jayhawks.  Which then included the next tweet…

“Keeping Kansas on the top line despite latest loss.  Two reasons: (1) overall body of work; (2) rules still require four No. 1 seeds.”

OK – so I realize Twitter’s lack of characters allows for a lot of lack of clarity.  But let me get this straight.  Three days ago, based on important qualities “like body of work” – Joe felt Syracuse was the 3rd best team and Kansas was the 5th.  Then, after Syracuse loses on the road to a team he currently had ranked as a 3 seed (and is now the ACC regular season champion) – and Kansas loses on the road to a team struggling to get to .500 in their conference and keep their tournament hopes alive, it becomes obvious that Kansas should be ranked higher because of only “body of work”.

I get it, a lot of top teams lost – and so it feels like no one is deserving the final top seed.  But it seems awfully inconsistent to say body of work – Kansas’s body of work before yesterday’s game wasn’t better in his mind.  So – how does losing to Oklahoma State (instead of Virginia) make that so obvious he should switch.  I think it is fair to say that now that both teams have blemishes on their resume, the fact that Kansas is still going to win their regular season championship (barring collapse) will give them a leg up in getting the last top seed.  But I don’t think you can claim body of work, when you weren’t saying that three days ago.

You might say, Tom – it doesn’t matter.  Both Kansas and Syracuse will be in the tournament as a top 1 or 2 seed – it is irrelevant.  But in my mind, it isn’t.  Because if Joe uses this type of logic on the top of his bracket, he is likely doing it on the bottom as well.  My only hope is that the committee doesn’t get influenced too much by these experts.

OK – back to getting the Lunatic site back up and running.  I only have two weeks until the madness begins.