The Final Four begins this weekend. The event represents a culmination of two weeks of passionate college basketball, where 65 NCAA Tournament teams were whittled down to four.

Those four squads now will face-off in Atlanta until one team remains – the national champion.

Sure it sounds intense, but it’s nothing compared to the scale of the Tournament-related action taking place outside the arena.

Employees, students and everyone between participate in tournament pools ranging in prices from a couple bucks to thousands. Web sites like Facebook and ESPN.com attract millions of participants in yearly bracket contests where the best prognosticators win prizes. In Las Vegas, big-time casinos battle the NCAA over the nuances of gambling on college sports.

The enormous amount of gambling surrounding the college basketball postseason reveals March Madness has earned its nickname in more way than one.

The money spent in Nevada, the lone state that allows for legal gambling on college sports, factors little into the total amount exchanged in casinos each year. Dr. Bill Eadington, the Director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, said betting on the NCAA Tournament accounts for only about one percent of the sum of money spent by bettors.

Despite the relative lack of money bet on the Tournament, Eadington acknowledges the pervasive influence of the Tournament remains undeniable.

Looking at 2006 statistics from Las Vegas sportsbooks, Eadington observed that of the $46 million wagered on basketball – both college and professional – $20 million was bet in March.

Eadington described the NCAA Tournament as ‘severely significant’ in its role of bringing people to Las Vegas during March. The Tournament has been used as a powerful marketing tool. Casinos display games on massive television screens, attracting tourists for an entertaining weekend of watching quality basketball and enjoying the city’s expensive nightlife.

The lure of the NCAA Tournament pool also exists far beyond the realm of Sin City. The hype surrounding the Tournament has turned it into the one sporting event that most participants are not die-hard fans.

It has been reported that 22.9 percent participate in office pools. The majority of the $3 billion risked on the Tournament each year is bet illegally. Part of that money is spent on Internet gaming sites, but the most frequent form of illegitimate gambling goes toward the conventional office pool.

‘Technically there are prohibitions,’ Eadington said. ‘March Madness is a period of a massive abuse of the law, but there’s no real sentiment to enforce it.’

Many of the participants, though, aren’t outlaws. Instead they are casual sports fans looking for March excitement. There is no surprise when even the most indifferent college basketball viewer grows eager to provide some answers by putting his or her own prophesizing skills to the test. Especially when every friend he or she knows has his own idea of who will dominate the Big Dance.

‘It is a social kind of phenomenon because then you can talk to the colleagues who are also in the pool and talk about why you’re betting this way and how’s it going and who’s going win,’ said professor William Pooler, who teaches sociology of sport at Syracuse. ‘Human beings are social. Human beings like to have things they can share with other people.’

Pooler said much of the appeal created for the Tournament has started with the immense coverage the event receives from media outlets, particularly with the advent of the Internet.

Many major Web sites have pools in which you can fill out a bracket and the site can score your picks against a small group of friends or the entire nation of bracket lovers.

‘The fact that more people can enjoy betting on the NCAA Tournament without visiting a brick and mortar sportsbook, the Internet age has ushered in the era of the sophisticated bettor,’ Calvin Ayre, founder of the online gambling site Bodog, said in an e-mail. ‘With all the statistical information available online, oddsmakers have to be on their toes at all times.’

Facebook and ESPN.com offer prizes to top prognosticators. ESPN.com has turned the selection process into a scholarly practice by anointing St. Joseph’s sports information director Joe Lunardi as the Web site’s resident ‘bracketologist.’ On The New York Times’ Web site, readers can compare their brackets to those of Times staff writers.

In a society that loves to compete, the NCAA Tournament delivers the best and most exciting version of the run of the mill ‘friendly’ competition.

However with money often on the line in most pools, many disapprove of the way the Tournament appears to condone gambling on such a large scale – most notably the event’s namesake.

‘The policy on the NCAA side of thing is it’s a violation of NCAA to participate (in pools which require a fee to participate),’ said Stacey Osburn, an associate director for public and media relations for the NCAA.

The association’s Web site emphasizes the consequences ‘student-athletes, athletics department staff members, and conference office staff’ might face if found participating in an illegal pool, which includes the loss of eligibility.

With the excitement engulfing the tourney from start to finish, it’s easy to comprehend the NCAA’s concern that athletes can be tempted to wager on the competition.

Gambling scandals have existed periodically throughout the years. The most recent occurred in the late 1990s at Boston College and Northwestern.

A 2003 poll by the NCAA implied the continued existence of gambling in college sports. According to the survey of 388 men’s basketball players surveyed, 17 admitted to involvement or knew someone who was involved in ‘extreme gambling behavior.’

The NCAA campaigns a ‘Don’t Bet On It’ program to curb gambling by amateur athletes in schools across the country. Part of the operation involves sending FBI agents to the 32 teams that qualify for the men’s and women’s Sweet 16 to educate teams on the costs of gambling.

Another intriguing aspect of the campaign is the, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them,’ approach the NCAA has with Las Vegas casinos.

For years the NCAA attempted to pass legislation banning gambling on amateur sports in Las Vegas. The bill failed each time, and now the NCAA has established relationships with sportsbooks in Vegas to better understand what goes on.

Bookmakers keep close watch on betting patterns and unusual betting trends, which has proven helpful in identifying point-shaving scandals.

‘At the end of the days, we both have the similar objective that we went to keep the integrity of the game,’ Osburn said. ‘And of course Las Vegas wants to do that for every different reason than we want to but, however, we are working toward the same goal.’

Stephen Capozzi, the gambling prevention specialist at the Council on Alcoholism & Addictions of the Finger Lakes, points out how placing money on NCAA Tournament pools has become so commonplace that participants often do not even realize that these office pools are actual illegal.

‘Illegal gambling is illegal,’ Capozzi said. ‘We try not to take amoral connotation to it. We don’t really condone it but we’re certainly not an advocate.’

Capozzi concedes it would be impossible to enforce these frequent violations of the law, nor does he believe it’s necessary. Instead Capozzi proposes the approach that needs to be taken is one of responsible gambling.

Capozzi thinks the NCAA could do more to help with the issue. He would like to see it teach gambling prevention on a larger scale instead of merely focusing on the athletic department.

Pooler and Eadington both agree with this point. To some degree the effort the NCAA puts into gambling prevention seems uncommitted, and it’s simply a means for the organization to cover its back in case another gambling scandal arises, Pooler explained.

‘The NCAA has been fighting legal sports relating in Nevada for some time and pushing for legislation that would make it illegal,’ Eadington said. ‘But on the other hand there is an implicit acknowledgement that part of the entertainment on the tournament is from the wagering.’

Gambling and the NCAA Tournament go hand-in-hand more than any other sporting event. Not even events like the World Cup or Super Bowl can claim as loyal of a following as the college basketball postseason.

When the Final Four concludes this weekend, there will be screams of exhilaration, tears of joy and a small band of people will have bragging rights over the rest of the nation. And the only requirement to be a member of this group – make a couple lucky guesses.

‘It’s sort of institutionalized in a sense,’ Pooler said ‘When the Final Four comes up for college basketball there’s a need that people have to get involved in some way. And the best way to get involved, and the easiest way to get involved, and the cheapest way to get involved is the pool.’

Published on March 27, 2007 at 12:00 pm