It’s Time for Fans to Shoot a Little Pool

Sixty-four teams, yet the fans cheer for the same thing.

Themselves.

Three vivid weeks in 13 colorful arenas, yet they focus on the same black-and-white scraps.

Their pools.

Can we finally stop with all this waxing and rhapsodizing and piano-keys-twinkling-while-players-are-bawling and admit it?

The NCAA basketball tournament is no more than a national lottery dressed in baggy shorts and tank tops.

It’s a bookmaking operation disguised as a sporting event.

It’s as much about basketball as Las Vegas is about sunshine.

Oh, so you’re different. So you watch for the pure amateur athletics and human drama.

OK, fine, then tell me, where is Wake Forest? What type of university is Gonzaga? What is a Bogut? And three weeks from now, will you care?

The tournament is presented as searing drama, but all we understand is seeds.

“Let’s see, I’ll pick one 12-seed to win the first round, one 11-seed, a couple of nine-seeds ... and no way all four top seeds are making it to the Final Four, so I have to whack one of them.”

The tournament is supposed to be about the best team in college basketball, but all we care about is being the smartest dude in the office.

“So Roy Whatshisname has never won a championship? How about me? I’ve been doing it longer than he has, and last year I had six of the final eight.”

The Wall Street Journal is not known for sports coverage, and even less for centerfolds, yet this week it had both, printing a full-color, bigger-than-the-stock-tables brackets diagram.

Probably because so many of its readers are, um, Duke fans.

The trash can next to your office copier is probably not usually overflowing with sports-related throwaways, either, but check it today, see how many crookedly copied bracket diagrams have been tossed.

A lot of Louisville alums hanging around, I guess.

NCAA officials consistently claim that pools have no bearing on the tournament’s popularity.

There are six billion reasons why they are wrong.

That’s how many dollars are involved in the tourney’s 11-year TV deal with CBS.

Amazing, because regular-season college basketball ratings barely eclipsed hockey’s.

Even more amazing, the tourney money has gone up while the ratings for the final game have declined, meaning most Americans watch the tourney for the early rounds.

When they are still alive in their pools.

That Old Dominion or Ohio might also still be alive is completely coincidental.

“Obviously, a huge number of people betting in pools has greatly helped the television ratings,” said Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports who runs a television consulting firm. “Large numbers of people who don’t ordinarily watch college basketball are watching because they have a piece of the bracket.”

An estimated one in 10 Americans will make pool selections this week. Folks in Las Vegas say the tournament has become bigger than the Super Bowl.

Yeah, because everybody has just fallen in love with ... St. Mary’s?

“For the NCAA to say that gambling has nothing to do with their tournament’s popularity is like somebody walking into a head shop and saying none of it has anything to do with marijuana,” said Marc Isenberg, an Irvine author who runs a college-athlete advocacy website. “That’s ridiculous.”

It’s more about brackets than basketball, such that all the cliches have earned new meanings.

Cinderella?

That would be the temporary secretary who picked Georgia Tech to reach last year’s final.

Buzzer beater?

That was the time you faxed in your pool entry from your Belize vacation hotel on Thursday morning, moments before the first tip of the first game.

The Big Dance?

This is what you do through the office after you hit on 28 of 32 first-round games.

March Madness?

This is how you feel, smart guy, when three of your Final Four teams lose on the second Thursday and you’re toast.

The sweet 16 is only sweet if you have 12 teams still playing.

The Elite Eight is elite only if you’re still at the top of the e-mail standings.

By the time the actual Final Four shows up, one of the greatest weekends on the college sports calendar, not many people truly care anymore.

Admit it. You pay more attention to the first weekend than the third weekend. You’ll watch the endings of eight games during the tourney, but click off the finale at halftime.

Not that there’s anything wrong with all this.

Except, sort of, there is.

It’s against the law.

Mike Chambers, the commanding officer of the LAPD’s vice division, explains.

“Pools are technically illegal, yes,” he said. “They are technically bookmaking.”

Chambers said his office doesn’t police pools unless the person running the pool is making big money from it.

“Otherwise, there is so much out there, how could you ever stop it?” he said.

But, really, why would you want to?

Pools are fun.

Pools, unlike the real tournament, are hope.

It’s really not March Madness, but March Sameness. Only three teams seeded lower than fourth have ever won the tourney. Only twice in the last 15 years has the tourney been won by a team lower than a second seed.

Starting Thursday, most of this season’s teams have no chance to be the champion.

But no matter who you are, you have that chance.

Feeling that way for a couple of weeks, that’s worth five bucks, no?

During my research for this story, one of my bosses promised me that our sports department would not have a pool.

A couple of hours later, somebody dropped a card on my desk.

Sorry, Boss, but I’m ending this column now so I can fill it out. No way I’m ruining my one shining moment.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.