With March Madness well under way and the Final Four this weekend, students continue to keep up on scores and all the action on their smart phones even while in school.
Senior John Hickernell is one student who follows the scores on his phone. “There’s a NCAA app that has the scores. You use 4G on your phone. I just check the upsets.” ESPN also has an app that records scores.
With such easy access to March Madness online records, students have to be careful how involved they are with their brackets during school hours. Betting on March Madness brackets is considered a form of gambling, and is therefore not allowed at school. School administration prohibits gambling on school property.
Because Central’s cell phone policy allows students to use their phones in the hall and in the cafeteria, this checking is easy to do.
However, senior Ann Chapman said, “Maybe I’ll text my dad, but I don’t check online [during school].”
At home, Chapman follows the scores more closely. “I mostly watch my favorite teams and then I’ll watch the Final Four and the championship game,” she said. She is in a bracket with family friends and work, so she keeps tabs on that.
Similar to Chapman, Senior Alex Harvey follows only select games. “Usually I wait [to find out who won] until after school unless it’s a team I like—usually the Elite Eight.”
Two years ago, Harvey and her mom randomly guessed that the University of Connecticut would do well in their brackets. Her dad and brother, who follow basketball more closely, had not predicted that. That was the year that UConn won the national championship.
With her past experience, Harvey suspects a lot of winning brackets simply involve luck. This luck is what school administration views as potential for interest in gambling.
Whether or not students choose to check their brackets during school, March Madness proceeds as topic of conversation.
