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Need for Information Is Creating a Bracket
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"It really makes you wonder about the gross national product of the country," Lunardi said. "I get e-mails like, 'Dear Joe, I have a patient in here, but I just stepped forward to my laptop.' Or, 'Joe, I'm a trial lawyer and am very analytical and I don't like where you seeded this team.' I'll write back, 'I don't tell you how to do your closing argument; don't tell me where to seed Michigan State.' "
This week, Lunardi and Palm will work 18-hour days. If one could remain awake for 24 hours, Lunardi said, there would be enough to do. Palm's wife, Cheri, said it gets to the point where Palm doesn't get enough sleep.
"We usually don't talk to Jerry" on Selection Sunday, she said. "At some point he decides, 'I'm done with my bracket.' The big decision on Selection Sunday is whether we will be able to go to church."
The heavy workload is not only reserved for the most established. In the week leading up to last year's Selection Sunday, Mihm, the Web site designer, spent 60 hours researching the field and updating his bracket daily, a responsibility that this season likely will interfere with his day job.
"I've got clients lined up this year," Mihm said, "and I'm trying to tell them, 'Hey, it might be the second or third week of March before you get something from me.' "
Kulenych, the high school teacher, said it will be nearly impossible to concentrate during Championship Week, so "we show a lot of movies," he said, perhaps half-jokingly. Kulenych's partner on his Bracketology 101 Web site is Craig Gately, a San Diego-based Marine who wonders how much time he will have for the bracket next season because in August he will be deployed to Iraq.
"But if something comes up down the line, that would be great," Gately said. "There are other bracketologists out there who started out a couple years ago as well."
The one characteristic that all bracket connoisseurs share is that by next Sunday, when March Madness truly begins, their madness ends.
"Selection Sunday is our national championship day," Kulenych said. "Not that we care less about the tournament, but we do so much work leading up to it that it is a huge letdown the next day. Everyone is amped to fill their brackets out and pick upsets, but we're bummed out. Our work is done."
