Around this time every year, there’s always that one guy at your job that makes about 1,000 too many copies one Monday, and before you know it he’s in your office asking whether or not you want to partake in the NCAA basketball tournament office pool. I’m that guy. Hosting the office pool is about as easy as selling stock in GM right now, what with the “slumping economy” we all keep hearing about. People are keeping their dollars for essential items like “food” and “electricity”. Who needs all that when you can have fun trying to guess the winners of college basketball games that you most likely won’t even be able to watch?

It’s really all about incentive these days. You have to make it worth someone’s while to take part in this year’s office pool, because people want real bang for their buck. With that in mind, I’ve devised a few simple ways for you to spice up the office pool and hopefully up the fun with more participants. Keep in mind that office pools are illegal and we are in no way condoning them for anything more than bragging rights around the office because you’re a way better guesser than the rest of those chumps.

• Lower prices on brackets – Obviously the easiest way to get more participants is to charge them less to take part. Try a penny bracket, or even a free one where the winner gets to wear flip-flops around the office for a week or for the rest of the month the other participants have to refer to the winner as “Your Majesty”.
• Make winners out of losers – Turn the bad news into good news by rewarding the person who receives the worst score of the tourney. They probably won’t even want whatever it is you try to give them because they’ll feel guilty. You know what? Scratch giving them anything and just keep that special “loser prize” for yourself. That loser didn’t deserve it anyway.
• Halftime Capri Suns and orange wedges – Maybe it’ll look weird when you and the other pool participants are sitting around the lunch room table 6 times on Thursday and Friday eating these tasty halftime treats, but so what? Those other totally uncool coworkers are just jealous because they haven’t had such delicacies since their 2nd grade soccer matches.
• Liveblogging of the office pool – People want to stay informed about what’s going on in the tournament. Sure they’ve got that whole internet thing at their disposal for scores and such, but we all know that blogging is where it’s really at. Do a live blog for your pool participants, with updates on who’s leading the pool, which teams are looking good to move on, and where the celebration will be held after you’ve won the tourney by changing the rules halfway through to favor you (it’s not really “cheating” if you add a rule after the fact).
• Real-time reenactments of key moments – Who needs ESPN when you’ve got the wastebasket in your office and an endless supply of paper rocks (that’s basketball slang for ball) with which to replay the best moments of the day? Get together with the other members of the pool and find the most open space in the office where everyone can watch. Stage reenactments of the best buzzerbeaters and the wildest dunks of the day for the whole office to see. Run for cover when your boss walks by to see what the commotion is all about. He hates fun.

Now it’s time to take action. With just a few days left until selection Sunday, you’re gonna have to get to work on some of the particulars for making this year’s pool the true economic slumpbuster it deserves to be. Get to the grocery and store and round up those halftime treats; make sure you’ve got that liveblogging software hacked onto to your workstation, and order an extra ream of paper for all of the dunking and last-second heroics you’ll be performing for the masses. Oh, and don’t forget to hatch that plan to weasel everyone out of their money before the tourney is over so you can keep it all for yourself.

After all we are in a recession, and you need all the money you can get.

Tags: Funny Business

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 1:08 pm by Joshua Feig and is filed under | Combustible Ideas | Funny Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.