Let the Madness Begin

The men's college basketball tournament is underway. The company I work for, Townsquare Media, has their annual staff bracket challenge. Every year they encourage everyone to fill out a bracket for a chance to win prizes. If you get a perfect bracket you win $1,000,000. The odds of that happening are like 1 and 9 quintillion or something stupid like that. If you predict 60 games correctly you win $10,000. Even that is a long shot. The first place winner receives a $500 party for themselves and all their coworkers.

I have to be honest with you, I think I've watched a total of six hours of college basketball this year, and that includes going to a Binghamton University game. I haven't even been watching Sports Center to keep up with the college hoops. So, when I sat down to fill out my bracket, it was pretty much a guessing game. But, I filled it out anyway and we'll see what happens. I'm sure a lot of people in our company fill their brackets out without ever watching a single game. I didn't pick too many upsets so I'm hoping the selection committee placed the right teams in the right seeds. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

According to a new survey on PR Newswire, Americans will gamble approximately $10 Billion on the NCAA tournament this year. The survey also says that 97% of those bets are illegal. I'm not a lawyer, but I remember being told in the past, that if the person running the bracket pool, pays out everything they brought in and don't take a percentage, that It's not illegal in New York State. Don't quote me on that, because the person that told me that years ago wasn't a lawyer either.

Good luck with your bracket. I'm going to need a crapton of luck to win with mine.

[via PR Newswire]