Two cents’ worth of loyalty

For the NCAA tournament’s first rent-a-rooters, the experiment was fun but the pay was lousy.

Jerry Felix and Doug Kourie, who have tickets to today’s four games in Columbus, Ohio, hoped to sell their cheering services on EBay this week. They promised to cheer wildly for the favorite schools of the highest bidders in four separate auctions.

The auctions ended Thursday, with two drawing one cent each, and the other two failing to attract a bid. Still, a deal’s a deal, so -- per their EBay agreements -- they’ll be pulling today for Tennessee over Long Beach State, and Holy Cross over Southern Illinois.

“We’ll see if anybody shows up with any T-shirts,” said Felix, 45, of Cincinnati. “I sent them both the seat numbers and said, ‘If you deliver us some T-shirts, then we’ll really go nuts.’ ”

Seeing as it cost less than a dollar for the EBay posting, Felix said they weren’t disappointed.

“It was well worth the 80 cents, just in humor,” he said. “This is one of those things we’ll be talking about for 50 years.”

-- Sam Farmer