Projo College Hoops

It appears that the celebrity run for Johnston's Joe Jamroz has come to an end.

The retired letter carrier emerged after last weekend's NCAA Tournament games in a three-way tie for first place out of more than 5 million entries in ESPN's online bracket challenge. His first-place bracket had 46 out of the first 48 games correct, and he nailed all of the Sweet 16 teams. Jamroz submitted the maximum allowed 10 entries, and the other nine were all in ties for the top four spots on the ESPN leaderboard.

Until last night.

Jamroz was correct about what happened in Boston -- he had Villanova upsetting Duke and Pittsburgh holding court against Xavier. But in the West Regional, Jamroz took a swing on Purdue and missed -- the Boilermakers lost to the favored Connecticut Huskies. To make matters worse, Memphis, the team Jamroz had making the Final Four out of the West, fell hard in an upset loss to Missouri.

The results mean that Jamroz -- though still in the 99th percentile nationally -- has fallen off the ESPN leaderboard and is probably not going to make a return.

But Jamroz is moving on with his life. When I called him this morning, he was taking a new class for one of the new temporary jobs with the U.S. Census Bureau.

And he was very good-natured about becoming a national celebrity for a few days.

"It was interesting and it was overwhelming a little bit and fascinating," he said. In addition to his many profiles in the local media, Jamroz got a phone call for a feature in USA Today and ended up on the nation's best-known sports highlights show.

"Hearing my name on ESPN's SportsCenter; I'm not sure how else I could have done that," Jamroz said.

Watching last night's games was tough, Jamroz says, but although he sounded a bit regretful about picking against UConn ("I didn't think they were as good as they were") he said he didn't have any second thoughts about going with Memphis. Hey, they don't call it March Madness because it's easy to figure out.

 Tags  ESPN Joe Jamroz NCAA Tournament

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