Mar 18th, 2008
March Madness: No Betting — Just Fun Around the Office
So it’s that fantastically fun time for college basketball fans everywhere: March Madness.
That time of year when the top 64 65 Division I teams in the United States get tapped for a weeks-long, single-elimination tournament to determine the top D-I, B-Ball team in all of collegedom.
And in case you were not sure, understand that March Madness is BIG BUSINESS spelled with two capital Bs!
How big you ask? Rumors and reports on the ‘Net state that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has pegged annual March Madness betting at $2.5 billion. Nevertheless, a recent story from KHOU-TV in Houston, Texas says the FBI has never made such a claim.
Maybe not; but I’m sure there’s a TON of money sitting in office pools all around the country right now.
As for us within the POLITIS universe of agencies, we take a non-gambling (yet still serious) approach to March Madness.
Specifically, the top two March Madness prognosticators in our firms will each win a $25 gift card to a local eatery (provided by the company):
- One for the top “point getter” (we assign escalating points for each win within each round of the tourney; ergo, the most points wins); and
- One for the top predictor of wins (pretty simple: the person who predicts more wins within the entire tournament than everyone else comes out on top).
This year we’ve also instituted what is affectionately known as the Bacon Equation, which means that if one person comes out on top in both categories, the second place finishers in both categories will pick-up $25 gift cards/certificates. [Yes, the Bacon Equation is named after Jonathan "Canadian" Bacon who nailed both categories in 2007.]
So . . . although we’re having fun while not gambling on March Madness, don’t think we’re not into this annual B-Ball lovefest in a big way.
In fact, everyone at SOAR Communications, Politis Communicationsand the other Politis entities takes the competition pretty seriously.
How seriously? Enough so, that although I’m banking on the No. 8-seeded BYU Cougars winning their first round match-up with the No. 9-seeded Texas A&M Aggies (which is nowhere close to being a sure thing), I had no compunction notching a loss for BYU in the second round to the No. 1-seeded UCLA Bruins. Sorry, Cougs!
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For the record, I have all four No. 1 seeds making the Final Four (North Carolina, Memphis, Kansas and the aforementioned UCLA), with Memphis winning it all.
Go Tigers!