Taking a Bath Commonplace in NCAA Basketball Office Pool

In offices across America last week, the coffee break buzz had nothing to do with work. Instead, the chatter was all about Buckeyes and Blue Devils, Bearcats and Bruins, and the rest of the first weekend’s survivors in the NCAA tournament.

Welcome to the NCAA college basketball tournament, perhaps the nation’s largest office pool, a neat bracketing of 64 teams that could pay off in some nice mad money for a modest investment.

UTEP beat Kansas? Can you believe that? East Tennessee State over Arizona? No way! Arkansas bounced by Memphis State? C’mon.

You pay your $5 or $10 -- or maybe $50 or $100 if the water is deeper -- and splash! you’re in the pool. Whether you sink or swim is up to a bunch of college kids running up and down the court, throwing up buzzer-beater baskets.

The pools are everywhere. One of the most popular in New York is run by a major television network, although no one there will talk about it on the record. The requirements are simple -- just pick a winner for each game. Get enough of them right and your $5 investment can earn a payoff approaching $2,500. That’s peanuts, though, compared to what goes on in the financial district, where brokers use the NCAA tournament as an extension of the market.

“Wall Street people make markets,” said one broker who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. “You can make markets on anything, and that includes the teams in the tournament.”

The basic pool is $640 -- 64 players putting in $10 each. That sets the payoff. Brokers trade tournament teams the same way they trade stocks. And just as a broker will sell stocks short, he might sell teams short.

“In true Wall Street fashion, every team has a value,” the broker said. “Duke might be worth $200, Kentucky might be worth $50. If I sell you 10 Dukes at $200 each, it costs you $2,000. If Duke wins the tournament, I owe you 10 times $640 or $6,400. If Duke loses, you’re out the $2,000.”

Those figures multiply depending on the market. “There are tens of thousands of dollars changing hands,” the broker said.

Just about every baseball spring training camp has a NCAA tournament pool. A couple of years ago, a standard FBI gambling presentation was delayed in Vero Beach, Fla. while the Los Angeles Dodgers completed their tournament picks.

Some teams have two and three pools operating at the same time. In the St. Louis Cardinal camp, the 64-team draw at the start of the tournament is followed by a Sweet 16 pool, sort of a second chance for those whose original entries were too badly damaged by the first weekend’s results.

If your taste runs to the more exotic, there is the pool conducted by a popular Manhattan sports hangout. It operates as a blind draft, 32 players pulling slips of paper out of a hat at $200 a pop. If you pull draft position No. 1, you also get No. 64. If you pull No. 2, you also get No. 63, etc.

“It’s all based on opinion,” the operator said. “This year, the guy who picked No. 1 chose Kansas. That was his opinion. The guy with No. 2 heaved a sigh of relief and took Duke.”

That player did not retain the Blue Devils for long, though. When they failed to cover the 32-point betting line against Campbell in the tournament opener, the player who had Campbell going in, won Duke.

“It keeps things interesting,” the pool’s inventor said.

Is all this just harmless fun, a little diversion to spice up the work day? Not according to Mike -- no last name, please -- a recovering compulsive gambler who staffs a volunteer hotline for Gamblers Anonymous.

“Does an alcoholic drink beer or wine or Scotch?” he said. “What’s the difference? He’s still an alcoholic. I flipped baseball cards when I was eight years old. I probably was gambling then. When I was nine, I had 3,000 marbles that I had won from other kids in my neighborhood. I lost them all in one night. I tell people I was a compulsive gambler then -- the night I lost my marbles.”

Arnie Wexler is executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey. He calls office pools one of compulsive gambling’s 40 “soft signs.”

“I got a call some years ago from a psychiatrist in Mississippi,” Wexler said. “His client was in the hospital after attempting suicide. The guy was $350,000 in debt. You know how it started? With a $5 football pool ticket in his office. In three years, he owed $350,000. “I can’t say every compulsive gambler starts like that. But he did.”

And then there is also the fact that sports betting is illegal. Two state employees in Rhode Island found that out last week when they were busted after someone squealed on their office pool. Police say they were only doing their job. They didn’t say if they had an office pool.

The office pools may merely reflect the increased interest the NCAA tournament is generating.

“Last weekend, it looked like the football season around here,” said Art Manteris, who runs the sports book at the Las Vegas Hilton. “The crowds were enormous.”

With UNLV barred this year, the Nevada books can take action on the entire tournament and there has been plenty of action to take. “College basketball is an attractive betting sport,” Manteris said. “I think it’s growing where others like the NBA playoffs are fading. I think the enthusiasm of the kids makes it more attractive.”

Besides, who ever heard of an NBA office pool?

Minneapolis, the Final Four host city, has a major case of tournament fever. And, like just about every place else, the city has its share of Final Four pools.

“I’m in one in my community for $10,” city councilman Walt Dziedzic said. “I put my wife’s name down. It’s a big one, 200, maybe 300 people. I picked Indiana, Michigan and Duke.”

Nice work, councilman, nailing three of the Sweet 16 survivors.

Then Dziedzic’s voice dropped.

“And Kansas,” he said quietly. “I picked Kansas to win it all.”