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Team HuskerBoard
Irregular News for 03.15.06
It won't show up in the U.S. Department of Labor's productivity statistics, but yesterday's malaise in the American workplace surely was a multimillion-dollar double dribble.
It's the kind of madness that shows up every March, as newspapers rush into print the brackets for the National Collegiate Athletic Association's basketball tournament. It's kind of aiding and abetting a winked-at pursuit that sometimes borders on criminal. And it contributes to that drop in productivity.
Think about it. In businesses nationwide yesterday morning, office pools were forming as they do every year, with a little cash kicked in to add some thrill to the game.
Is it illegal? Sure it is, but so is reserving a parking spot with a kitchen chair, and the consequences are usually equally mild, unless you're running a serious bookmaking operation out of your senior center or college dorm.
In fact, a spokesman for the FBI told the Scripps Howard News Service that while local office pools "could technically be a violation of federal law, especially if it crossed state borders, that would most likely be a case for local law enforcement."
According to the state police's Organized Crime Division, it's not a crime if all of the money taken in goes back out as winnings.
So, for the most part, the police aren't looking. And while the Boss wasn't looking, millions of basketball fans -- from the casual to the crazed -- spent part of their workday filling out the brackets.
Doing a little unscientific research, we put a stopwatch to two people filling out their picks in the NCAA brackets (See pages C-6 and C-7 of Monday's Post-Gazette; back copies are available.). On average, it took 14 minutes to fill out the brackets.
These were casual folks who didn't see fit to do the Internet research that the more ardent prognosticators might attempt.
Now, let's say that, conservatively, this action was repeated about 10.2 million times yesterday. (We didn't just pull that figure out of a hat; we're basing it on 15-percent involvement among the nation's 135.4 million people in the workforce, and assuming only half of that 15 percent actually filled them out while at work.)
That's a total of roughly 2.38 million hours spent filling out brackets. And most times, those hours are paid for by the Boss, and it's time he or she thought you were spending helping turn the wheels of capitalism.
Now, let's go a step further. The average American makes $13.53 per hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, multiply those 2.38 million hours of bracket finagling, and you're looking at a $32.2 million jolt to the economy -- the biggest such economic distraction since last year's Clinton impeachment vote. Or maybe just since last year's brackets came out.
These numbers are just a fraction of the dollar figures tossed around when talking about the NCAA tournament. The FBI estimates that $2.5 billion is waged in illegal betting on the tournament each year. CBS, the network that broadcasts the games, spent a total of $1.73 billion to win the television rights.
The costs to businesses won't stop there, of course. Starting Thursday, the games begin. Again, would-be workers will be sidetracked as Cinderella stories emerge on hidden TVs and radios, Webcasts and phone checks across the land.
But let's face it: Sometimes business has to take a back seat to buzzer-beating jumpers. It's a small price to pay, isn't it?
source
It won't show up in the U.S. Department of Labor's productivity statistics, but yesterday's malaise in the American workplace surely was a multimillion-dollar double dribble.
It's the kind of madness that shows up every March, as newspapers rush into print the brackets for the National Collegiate Athletic Association's basketball tournament. It's kind of aiding and abetting a winked-at pursuit that sometimes borders on criminal. And it contributes to that drop in productivity.
Think about it. In businesses nationwide yesterday morning, office pools were forming as they do every year, with a little cash kicked in to add some thrill to the game.
Is it illegal? Sure it is, but so is reserving a parking spot with a kitchen chair, and the consequences are usually equally mild, unless you're running a serious bookmaking operation out of your senior center or college dorm.
In fact, a spokesman for the FBI told the Scripps Howard News Service that while local office pools "could technically be a violation of federal law, especially if it crossed state borders, that would most likely be a case for local law enforcement."
According to the state police's Organized Crime Division, it's not a crime if all of the money taken in goes back out as winnings.
So, for the most part, the police aren't looking. And while the Boss wasn't looking, millions of basketball fans -- from the casual to the crazed -- spent part of their workday filling out the brackets.
Doing a little unscientific research, we put a stopwatch to two people filling out their picks in the NCAA brackets (See pages C-6 and C-7 of Monday's Post-Gazette; back copies are available.). On average, it took 14 minutes to fill out the brackets.
These were casual folks who didn't see fit to do the Internet research that the more ardent prognosticators might attempt.
Now, let's say that, conservatively, this action was repeated about 10.2 million times yesterday. (We didn't just pull that figure out of a hat; we're basing it on 15-percent involvement among the nation's 135.4 million people in the workforce, and assuming only half of that 15 percent actually filled them out while at work.)
That's a total of roughly 2.38 million hours spent filling out brackets. And most times, those hours are paid for by the Boss, and it's time he or she thought you were spending helping turn the wheels of capitalism.
Now, let's go a step further. The average American makes $13.53 per hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, multiply those 2.38 million hours of bracket finagling, and you're looking at a $32.2 million jolt to the economy -- the biggest such economic distraction since last year's Clinton impeachment vote. Or maybe just since last year's brackets came out.
These numbers are just a fraction of the dollar figures tossed around when talking about the NCAA tournament. The FBI estimates that $2.5 billion is waged in illegal betting on the tournament each year. CBS, the network that broadcasts the games, spent a total of $1.73 billion to win the television rights.
The costs to businesses won't stop there, of course. Starting Thursday, the games begin. Again, would-be workers will be sidetracked as Cinderella stories emerge on hidden TVs and radios, Webcasts and phone checks across the land.
But let's face it: Sometimes business has to take a back seat to buzzer-beating jumpers. It's a small price to pay, isn't it?
source
