RSSThe Biggest Loser in the NCAA Tournament? CBS.
Mar 15
Sports, The Goodman File NCAA tournament No Comments
The Ides of March are upon us
If you know your Shakespeare, this will mean something to you. In the world of Johnny Goodman, this means taking off the opening Thursday of the NCCA Basketball tournament from work, setting up shop at a local establishment that has numerous televisions, and enjoying an adult beverage or three.
For many the bubble burst, for many many more the bubble never existed, and now that the talking heads and spurned coaches have had three or four days to hash out who got jobbed and why, we can move on to the real important topic. Bracket Pools.
Depending on what online source you read, billions of dollars are figured as lost in space in terms of productivity this time of year as thousands of workers clamor at break time, at lunch, on the phone to their buddies, even on email, as to if this twelve seed is gonna knock of this five seed. Millions of office pools are in place in the United States. Heck some areas will even have Women’s tourney pools, (I am guessing Connecticut has a higher than average participation rate for these) as well as NIT Pools (although I have not seen any floating around Lincoln yet, but maybe in Boulder)
On line there are thousands of pools you can enter, some are small local television pools with a chance to win maybe a big screen television. Others are major national monster insurance company advertising pools that offer great prizes such as all expense paid vacations or substantial cash rewards.
The fact is that March Madness (shouldn’t they start calling it April Madness as it ends in April?) is big time business. The only real losers are CBS, who has taken a bath with revenues compared to what they shell out to show the games on the tube. So what is the answer? The NCCA adds a couple of more “who really cares” play in games and then CBS goes out and adds in a couple of more networks to assure “ALL” games are on television, and they pay even MORE money than they were previously.
So let’s review. Big losing contract to NCAA + adding four more games now equals even more money that CBS is paying to the NCAA to cover games this year…..sounds like a genius deal to me.
So remember as you fill out your pools this year, just channel your inner Charlie Sheen…..
“DUH….WINNING!”
Stay Classy Morehead State!