How does this guy have a job?

It's early January and ESPN.com is already discussing seedings for the college basketball tourney. Apparently "Bracketologist" Joe Lunardi gets paid to give his expert opinion on who will get what seed. Somewhere an ESPN editor said, "we need someone to tell people if Iowa will be a seven seed in the Oakland bracket." Worse, there is someone out there that feels compelled to check this thing in January. It's just one more reason why ESPN is too full of themselves.

Most teams that get off to fast starts do so by beating Canisius and Coastal Carolina, the equivalent of the Glen Mason plan in football. Conference play has barely started so there is no way to tell if Tennessee is for real(probably not, unless they have their women playing). Even after the brackets are officially announced in March, they often are worthless. So why are they trying to predict them now?

How does Lundardi the Wizard choose his brackets anyway? On a quick glance It sure looks like he takes the AP poll and then fills in the bracket, a task easily achieved by anyone able to count to 64. He may have a better way to do it and more analysis (as if we need it), but since you have to be an Insider to access it, it's hard to say. And hard to care.