A Never-Ending Math Orgy with Ken Pomeroy
The Distraction: A Defector Podcast
Defector Media
4.4 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Happy March Madness! As always, Drew and Roth are joined by Ken Pomeroy of KenPom.com to talk about the men’s bracket. Is Ken’s insight still the gold standard, or are AI rankings coming for his job? Do the top seeds all look ready to bloom on schedule, or is one of them obviously the cream of the crop? And who’s in everyone’s final four? Then, they open up the funbag… for corrections?
Do you want to hear your question answered on the pod? Well, give us a call at 909-726-3720. That is 909-PANERA-0!
Stuff We Talked About
- Irish accents (of varying quality)
- Emergency Boozers
- A one-man anti-Arizona army
- Golf course dealmaking
- The death of the WAC & Cinderella
Sponsors
- Raycon, where you can get 20% off Essential Open Earbuds
Credits
- Hosts: Drew Magary & David Roth
- Producer: Brandon Grugle
- Editor: Mischa Stanton
- Production Services & Ads: Multitude Podcasts
- Subscribe to Defector!
About The Show
The Distraction is Defector's flagship podcast about sports (and movies, and art, and sandwiches, and certain coastal states) from longtime writers Drew Magary and David Roth. Every week, Drew and Roth tackle subjects, both serious and impossibly stupid, with a parade of guests from around the world of sports and media joining in the fun! Roth and Drew also field Funbag questions from Defector readers, answer listener voicemails, and get upset about the number of people who use speakerphone while in a public bathroom stall. This is a show where everything matters, because everyone could use a Distraction. Head to defector.com for more info.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | back we're back this distraction i'm drew that's roth we're recording on st patrick's day so |
| 0:07.7 | happy st patty's day to you david overall and uh happy st patrick's day to you true |
| 0:13.2 | oh yours isn't that yours is actually it's i just did it quieter uh any bad accent |
| 0:18.4 | which is to say any accent that I attempt to do, eventually becomes |
| 0:21.6 | either like some sort of Scottish Jamaican amalgam. So I just tried to underplay it so that you |
| 0:27.5 | didn't have to deal with me saying happy St. Patrick's Day to you and like the cool running's voice. |
| 0:32.8 | I would personally like to meet someone who was both Scottish and Jamaican. And I think that would be a lot of fun. That would be a thrill. Like Crownskeeper, Willie, but like with Rastodreds and stuff like that. I can't even begin to approximate an accent on. No, I think it's better if you don't. We would instantly have this podcast removed from the feed and be placed in some sort of custodial care. If we attempted that accent, we should talk about something else. Yeah, I'm part of Irish, but I don't give a shit and no one else does. What everyone does give a shit about. There it is. It's March Madness. Oh, that's true. The NCAA's beginning this weekend. As always, we've got our good friend Ken Pomeroy with us to talk about the men's bracket. |
| 1:12.8 | Yay, I can. |
| 1:14.2 | Hey, man. |
| 1:14.8 | Hey, guys. |
| 1:15.8 | Great to be back. |
| 1:16.8 | Thank you for making the time. |
| 1:18.5 | Yes, it is lovely to have you here. |
| 1:20.9 | How is the ranking biz these days? |
| 1:24.7 | And do you feel like the business is on steady ground? |
| 1:27.1 | Has anyone approached you and said, |
| 1:29.8 | you know, these rankings would be a little bit better if you could harness the power of AI again. |
| 1:35.4 | Yeah, you're going to use Claude? Lots of questions about AI, yeah. |
| 1:39.3 | Oh, yeah. The ranking business is strong. There's still teams out there to rank. And things are going well. And I've resisted the urge to, yeah, outsource my work to AI. It seems like a, it seems like a hack that might not even have a lot of value to it. Yeah, that's the, as I was saying this before we came on, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. So I think people should know that I'm in a, my friend Brendan does a hand scored fantasy league. |
| 2:03.2 | We draft players for the NCAA tournament and we build teams and then, you know, I don't |
| 2:07.4 | know what. |
| 2:08.2 | One year, if you finished last, you got a copy of Jay Billis's book about leadership. |
... |
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