Estimated loss to companies from time spent reading articles about estimated loss to companies from time spent on NCAA pools: One million billion dollars.

Got my first press release of the season on the alleged goof-off crisis today; look for articles soon in a newspaper near you.

Comments

[Andrew Brod]

I've always hated these stories. For one thing, this only matters if the tournament leads workers to waste more time than they would waste anyway. After all, a little downtime is already factored in to salaries and business plans.

What seems most likely is that the time workers normally spend arguing about politics and women (or men) will over the next three weeks be devoted to seeds and brackets.

Moreover, suppose $1 billion is the right number (and there's no reason to believe it is). Over the course of these three weeks, the value of the economy's output will be between $900 million and $1 trillion. The alleged loss due to the NCAA tournament is far less than 1% of that. We can afford it.

[Jon A Firebaugh]

Productivity lost to tournament estimated to cost $94M a day; consultant says cost is worth it.
If a consultant from Chicago says so, it must be true.

Scrap the stimulus package, basketball is better

[beelzebubba]

there's another downside. my wife got the acc bracketology phd at her office. she broke a tie by picking the spread. it was a new method to her because picking upsets paid more. For example, picking Dook to win 3 got her only 3 points. Picking MooU to win 2 got her 22 points. She left Friday down 18 and came in Monday to a pot full of paper money which she might use to buy about 1k grams of junk silver or some go-go boots on craigslist. This can't be good for the stimmalus or amerika.