I was nestling into my favorite spot Tuesday, the day’s hard work done and the best part on deck, favorite beverage within arm’s length, Wake Forest and Pitt preparing to play college basketball, when Joe Lunardi’s ugly mug suddenly consumed all 70 inches of my TCL Smart TV.

If you do not know Joe Lunardi, he is ESPN’s useful idiot, a self-ascribed college basketball analyst whose bracketology has too much sway on which 68 teams get to dance in the NCAA basketball tournament – the same as ESPN’s other tool, Paul Finebaum, does in college football.

He was asked the significance of the Pitt-Wake game, which featured two “bubble” teams, and what follows is the gist if not the exact words.

“Well, the ACC sucks, and Wake, because they are at home, cannot help itself tonight, but a loss could hurt the Deacs. Pitt could get a Quad 1 win, well it would be for now, but who knows what it will be later, so the Panthers stand to move up in the NET. Did I mention the ACC sucks? If not, I will. The ACC sucks.”

The Demon Deacons then dispatched Pitt, one of the league’s hottest teams with road wins over Dook and N.C. State, 91-58, but remained on the bubble according to Lunardi. Yep, a 33-point win over a red-hot Pitt team kept Wake Forest squarely on idle in Lunardi’s World, where the Moutain West Conference has six teams dancing and the ACC four.

Let me insert this parenthetically: I am not a fighting man, having retired in 1978 with a 1-1-1 record, but Little Joe and Finebaum are two of four people on Earth who if I happened to walk into a bar sufficiently lubricated, I would be pleased to punch in the nose. The other two I once called Boss.

So, you wonder, as do many, what is a Quad 1 win?

In an effort to apply objective reasoning to what will always be a subjective call, the NCAA Selection Committee has developed a system in which wins and losses are weighted, and a loss can be of more value than a win. You don’t need to read back, you read it correctly.

It can be said that Lunardi is only applying this flawed system, but he does so with obvious bias against the ACC. If a good team in the ACC falls to a lesser team, Lunardi always determines that means the good teams are not so good, and never concludes perhaps the bad teams are better than previously thought. Lunardi, like Finebaum, takes two knees at the ESPN altar.

Also, a Quad 1 win today could become a Quad 2 win later because the scale is tipsy. As an example, if UNC went into Hansbrough Indoor Stadium in January and pounded a Dook team with all its first-round picks, that would be a Quad 1 win. But if all Dook’s first-round picks were to declare for the draft and bolt Durham in February instead of the day after they lose in the NCAA tourney, and Dook would begin losing games with the frequency of expletives coming from a former coach’s mouth, UNC’s Quad 1 win would become something less.

Make sense? Of course it does not.

Now for the NET, which no one fully understands, including me. I was a straight-A student in high school, got into UNC on early admission, graduated without honors in four years and five summer school sessions, and then crafted a 36-year career journalism without getting fired although it was a nailbiter once. So, I am of above-average intelligence, but not smart enough to understand either the system or Lunardi’s application of it.

As far as I can tell, the NET is a ranking, similar to the AP poll, but based on Lunardi’s whim, where a loss, as said earlier, can be better than a win. Because, according to Lunardi, the ACC sucks – which should be a difficult sale based on, well, on-court performances – that makes it difficult for ACC teams to climb in the NET while cannibalizing each other during league play.

Follow? Me neither, and I wrote it.

I have saved the worst part for last.

Because of my disdain for Lunardi, it has put me in the awkward position of having to cheer for ACC teams when the NCAA tournament begins so that this fraud can be exposed.

And in anticipation of the question, I will say, yes, that includes Duke, note the spelling, at least up until the rare occasion the Blue Devils are dancing and my Tar Heels are not. Then they are Dook again.

I think it can be fairly said that Lunardi has driven me insane.

It is called March Madness.