Consumer Escapes - The shallow end of the March Madness office pool

While I'm productively "working" by writing in a blog, every other working American it seems has his/her nose to the grindstone - the NCAA Men's Basketball grindstone that is. Why has this become such a gigantic mass escape? We don't fill out draw sheets for the NFL playoffs. It's certainly not the money. (I won a pool in 1989, lost every other year and am down hundreds of dollars.) I believe it's the need to "be right all the time" manifest in millions of office pools.

I can hear it now, "hey, how many did you get right in the first round? "Lose any of your Final Four teams yet?" Or, my favorite, "who's your bracket buster?" Note that they're your teams, regardless of where you actually went to college. Somehow by being correct in prognosticating, or a little more correct than your work mate, you're entitled to months of bragging rights.

So go Cornell, 'cause I've got a chance to get the edge on the whole finance department. Maybe later I'll post about those folks who complete multiple draw sheets. Shame on them ...