March Madness
NCAA Tourney more than mere sports event
America’s annual three-week obsession with college basketball is here. The NCAA men’s basketball tournament – more commonly knows as “March Madness” – will debut its expanded 68-team field tonight.
And rest assured that though the NCAA insists its players are amateurs, lots of money will change hands. The New York Times put the amount of cash legally wagered on the 2009 tournament at upward of $90 million. Considering how tough it is to get a hotel room in Las Vegas the next two weekends, that number might be a bit low.
In any event, the legally wagered figure hardly scratches the estimated $2.5 billion that folks across the land shell out in thousands of office pools. It leads to a number of curious spectacles.
Folks who days before didn’t even know where a school such as Morehead State is even located (Kentucky) will burst into cheers if the aforementioned Eagles pull the upset they predicted. Oh, by the way, much of this whooping-it-up goes on at work, where some reports have suggested American worker productivity dips during March Madness by as much as $3.8 billion.
We say so what? The $3.8 billion figure is based on shaky economics. Last year, an estimated 48 million viewers watched some of Duke’s win over Butler in the NCAA title game. Some 66 million viewers did not. And far more of the NCAA Tournament is shown at night or during the weekend than during a normal weekday.
Therefore, exactly how could a limited number of people (less than 30 percent of the estimated U.S. workforce) be wasting $3.8 billion worth of time in just two days? And when it comes to lost productivity, where are the estimates on how much e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and just about any other hand-held distraction costs us?
Much like the Super Bowl, the NCAA Tournament is now as much a cultural event as a sporting one. People plan parties and businesses run specials based on the games. And no matter what attention-seeking economists or PR firms say, there’s nothing wrong with a little early spring sporting diversion.
So let the Madness begin. Just don’t pick Duke to repeat.
Scripps Howard News Service