If you’re a fan of sports at all, or have ever worked in an office, there’s a good to great chance that you’re aware of the phenomenon that strikes America this time of year. That’s right – it’s March Madness, the 64 (er, 65) team college basketball tournament that drains efficiency from thousands of companies as workers kill their time filling out their brackets and subsequently trying to sneak in actually watching the games of the first few rounds of the tournament. It’s one big semi-gambling semi-orgy – and everyone semi-loves it.

The idea:
Readers and longtime members of the LAMB will recall that, last year, we had a summer box office prediction game entitled the “Summer of LAMB.” It was nothing fancy – just a number of people guessing what the top 10 movies would be, in order. However, with the NCAA tournament right around the corner, and with my joint film and sports appreciation, I got the idea to run a box office game the same way that the tournament is run. 32 films, one box office champion, many shining moments.

So, what you’ll do is click on the link provided below, download your bracket, fill it by picking the movie for each matchup that you think will have the higher box office total, and send it to me by April 2.

The rules:

1. For each matchup, select which film will have the higher box office. Continue through the bracket until a champion has been crowned.
2. Scoring per round will be 1-2-4-8-12, for a possible total of 76 points (see table in workbook).
3. For the tie-breaker, enter your predicted top 5 films (box office) from the ones listed. One point for will be rewarded for each correct film, and an additional point for proper placement, for a potential 10 points.  In the case of a tie, if one person’s tie-breaker portion is not filled out, the other will win.
4. Brackets MUST be turned in (sent to blogcabins@yahoo.com) no later than April 2.
5. Box office data will be counted from April 3 – September 27, 2009.
6. One entry per person.

The prizes:

TBD. I just thought of this and put it together in the last couple days, so the exact prizes are not know at this point. But there will be prizes!  Some ideas already in the mix are a custom-made t-shirt, DVDs, and possibly cash.  Since the brackets aren’t officially due until April 2, and the won’t officially end until almost six months later, I think we’re okay with this.  Hopefully, though, everything will be figured out come April 2.

The link to your bracket (if having troubles – right click, Save Target As):

http://www.freewebs.com/blogcabins/March%20to%20Box%20Office%20Madness.xls

Finally, what fun would this be if it’s just a few people?  I want this to be BIG!  I’ve made the banner that you see in the sidebar, and I’d love it if you’d put it on your site as well (if possible).  Let’s do this right!  With any luck, everyone will be doing it next year.

The banner:

The code:

Good luck, and be sure to get me your brackets by April 2! Any questions, comments, suggestions, or prize offerings (sponsorships???), email me at blogcabins@yahoo.com.