Much is made over the loss of productivity from the NCAA Tournament on two glorious Thursday and Fridays in March.
I’ve seen the billion dollar estimates, and I can’t say I don’t believe them walking by every computer screen this morning seeing 10 charts of most popular foods (CBS’s choice for the “boss button” on their live NCAA streaming application).
Truly though, corporations should be thanking the NCAA. Nothing brings together disparate office-mates like simultaneously watching teams they have not seen all season and rooting for arbitrary upsets they picked in their office pool. Seriously! When Western Kentucky beat Drake today (Who is DRAKE by the way?), the entire office came together, from their cubicles, excited, wondering how the upset impacted their brackets, and who they could make fun of that had Drake winning.
For these two weeks, no longer is office chit chatter a problem. See that fellow in the elevator that you had one meeting with and since have had nothing to say to? Did you SEE that Drake game? I never thought Drake would lose in the 1st round. Great season they had. What an upset. Never saw it coming. Etc.
Watching the swarm around the NCAA’s, I’m wondering if there’s a bigger market around work time programming. Instead of putting those Thursday night games on the NFL Network that no one gets, perhaps the NFL should consider it streaming it to desktops nationwide at Wednesdays at noon. I’ve certainly watched more commercials in the past two days than I have the rest of the year with my DVR. It’s a lot easier to watch commercials at work than to suffer through them at home, when you actually (hypothetically) have better things to do.
My favorite thing about the NCAA tournament is that its essentially designed so that the best team each year doesn’t win. By having 64 teams, single elimination, it’s all about flukes. Who cares about deserve? It’s all about a maddeningly unpredictable result. And when, as on Thursday, upsets don’t happen, we get headlines like “Where’s Cinderalla?” because this is why we’re here, to see teams that have dominated all season have one off day and be forced to lose to schools no one has heard of. Which is actually another cool thing. I have NO idea where any of the schools are from that don’t have their states/location in the titles. Oral Roberts. St. Joes. Mississippi State. Just kidding about the last one, but it sort of adds to the fun having no concept of who these kids are, where they are coming from, and how they did this season, but to be rooting desperately for them to pull of the upset since that guy with the annoying ringtone who sits down the hall has their opponent in the final 4 and there is nothing more satisfying than seeing someone’s bracket explode before the sweet 16 who is not you.
You see, it’s all about the camaraderie.
Photo via wikipedia
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