The NCAA tournament opens this week, and even people who never watch a college basketball game between November and March find themselves scribbling out brackets and mouthing sports cliches.
“It’s something I look forward to every year,” K Street banker Tom Hulse said.
Lobbyist Nick Yaksich isn’t a college basketball fan, but he’s certainly a bracket fan.
“I enjoy the buzz about it,” he said. “I never gamble — put that down. But this is the one time a year I do gamble.”
Experts estimate that between $2.5 billion and $3 billion changes hands in NCAA pools every year. Only a fraction of it passes through legal casinos. Most of it takes place at work, with employers, in essence, subsidizing it.
A recent study by the Alexandria-based Society for Human Resource Management found that more than a third of its member companies formally or informally forbade gambling at the office, but only 6 percent of the companies had bothered to discipline or fire employees for breaking the rules.
Despite a rise in absenteeism after big games, most employers said they thought office pools were good for team morale.
Office pools take over offices:
» 65 percent of workers bet on the Super Bowl
» 57 percent bet on the NCAA tournament
» 55 percent of employers believe that office pools have “a positive impact” on employee morale
» Tardiness increased 11 percent after a big game or event
» Sick days increased 8 percent after a big game or event
Source: Society of Human Resource Management, Jan. 29 study of members
That doesn’t mean employees can rest easy, said D.C. employment lawyer Charles W. Day Jr. “What people … don’t understand is that they have no right to privacy on the office computer,” he said. “If you’re running the office pool off the office computer and your employer goes through it, you’ve got not a leg to stand on.
“That’s kind of counterintuitive and maybe it’s not even right, but it’s the law,” Day added.
In fact, the Department of Justice recently circulated a memo among its employees reminding them that office pools are verboten. Still, even the White House Secret Service runs its own pool.
Not everyone comes down with bracket fever.
Yaksich’s colleague, Nick Tindall, used to run a “completely randomized” pool in which players weren’t required to know anything at all about the sport. Working in a small office, though, it’s harder to pull off, which means he sits out the office pool.
That leaves more room for Yaksich, who says he marvels at the sophistication of some office pools. And Yaksich knows his business: He’s already something of a minor legend in D.C. bracket circles.
For two decades, he organized the brackets for the American Public Transit Association. When he left, his friends dubbed the annual pool the “Nick Yaksich Memorial Bracket.”
“I called over there one time and [the receptionist] thought I was dead,” Yaksich recalled. “It’s my legacy.”
