2009 March Madness Office Pools For Fools

Unless you happen to be the secretary who knows nothing about college basketball, don't expect to win your 2009 March Madness office pool.  You know the drill, Janet chooses her brackets based on whether she's familiar with the city in which the college team is located.  "Oh Memphis, that's where Elvis is from, I'll pick them to win".  The rest of us poor saps who give a damn about the game and hope to cash in on that office pool rarely ever cut a break.

With all that said, most offices across the U.S. will have their 2009 March Madness office pools set for this upcoming season, which officially kicks off Sunday with the selection process.  The first game starts on Thursday.  Make no mistake about it, March Madness office pools add some excitement to the work place.  Studies have shown that morale generally improves over this period of time, though productivity may be a different story.

"It's a mad rush for office employees and online sports bettors alike during those few days leading into next Thursday," explains Payton O'Brien, Senior Editor of the Gambling911.com website, which anticipates a record number of March Madness bets coming in despite the lagging economy.

There is no better time to place a small stake in an office pool in hopes of winning the jackpot during these times of economic upheaval.  Chances are that over the course of the March Madness season, hundreds of thousands more people will lose their jobs.

"March Madness is an annual event that sparks management discussion about work-life balance and often puts a burden on IT to maintain business-as-usual status," TotalTech President, Ken Hamilton, stated.

Following Selection Sunday, business managers and IT staff will have to deal with employees who use company resources for entering online office pool data.  Even more worrisome from a production perspective is the number of employees who will be watching online streaming of college basketball games.

The March Madness office pool is a well marketed event to be sure.  Even the British papers report on the event.

Michael Tomasky of the Guardian writes in his blog:

"March Madness today has morphed into a massive cultural event in which essentially every workplace in the country runs intricate office pools, in which even people who don't know the difference between North Carolina and Southeast Alaska Teachers College are forced to submit their $5 and issue their prognostications. Usually, of course, the people in this category win the pools."

There are bracket contests online that are nearly impossible to win but the idea of a $175,000 payout by laying nothing still makes more sense than entering $5 into an office pool that only one idiot who knows nothing about college basketball is going to win anyway. 

SBG Global is offering its $500,000 2009 March Madness contest.  They have six placements with a grand prize of $175,000 being offered.  Yes, you have to be an active client but if you're betting and winning, that's better than Janet the Secretary bamboozling you with her off-the-cuff office pool picks.

Don Shapiro, Gambling911.com