By now, everybody’s NCAA Tournament office pool bracket has been filled out.

No doubt, most have Kentucky as national champion.

That’s good because it’s good to root for the home team. Last year, the office pools in Kentucky had a hollow feeling since the Wildcats were not part of the March party.

There was not much fun diving into the deep blue without the Big Blue.

Office pools for the NCAA Tournament have become a ritual, not only in Kentucky but throughout the country. Even last year, without the Big Blue in the running for the first time since 1991, workers across the state took the plunge into the office pool.

Those NCAA tournament pool contests aren’t illegal in Kentucky, as long as all the money that comes in is paid out. In other words, unless someone besides the winners take a cut, your office pool is legal (although not always approved by bosses).

The NCAA estimates more than 35 million Americans participate in office pools and, according to Nielsen Media Research, 92 percent of fans who watched games online do it at work.

Employers will take a $1.8 billion hit in unproductive wages this year because of the distractions caused by the tournaments, according to Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which provides an annual best guess as to how the tournament affects productivity.

The company used an online Microsoft/MSN survey to estimate that 45 percent of Americans planned to enter at least one college basketball pool last year. It then took February’s total payroll data and the average wage from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, multiplying the figure by an average of 20 minutes a day workers might waste checking results, watching games on TV or streaming them live over the Internet.

But March Madness may not be as mad as in years past, according to business experts who have found the majority of employers look at betting pools as morale boosters.

The NCAA tournament provides excitement like no other event with three weekends worth of do-or-die basketball.

Office pools became part of that national excitement and now are as synonymous with the tournament as its upsets.

People who haven’t watched one dribble of the college season will take a crack at the office pool. They’ll sometimes pick teams because they like their mascot, or the color of that school’s uniform. Who cares if they have two potential first-round NBA selections in the starting lineup? “I love Rhode Island’s powder blue uniforms,” they might say.

The numbers that we all follow — where the teams are seeded — doesn’t always matter to the novice office pool player who just wants to play because everybody else is playing, too.

And what’s funny, those participants usually do better than the “experts” who have studied the odds of a No. 12 vs. a No. 5, playing out games like Murray State vs. Vanderbilt over and over again in their heads, looking over the last 10 years of results and factoring in RPI, AP polls and talking head input. They’re usually left looking at a crumbled piece of paper that used to be their bracket.

Everybody also seems to think that you can’t win the NCAA pool without picking some upsets along the way. The truth is, picking the favorite most of the time is your best bet. The top seeds aren’t the top seeds for nothing.

So if you picked Kentucky to win it all in your office pool bracket — and I suspect most of you did — don’t feel bad.

Being true to the blue isn’t a bad thing this year, that’s for sure.

MARK MAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2648.