Is the prevalence of NCAA basketball office pools a sign of a growing cultural acceptance of gambling?
I don’t think there’s any doubt that there’s a growing cultural approval of gambling. The spread of casinos is the best example of this. There’s a growing normalization of gambling, a growing insertion of gambling, in our daily lives. For the vast majority of people who participate in NCAA office pools, it’s harmless fun. If you look at the prevalence of problem gambling, you’re talking about a very small percentage of the population. However, I do believe the prevalence of problem gambling is growing and I believe the increased saturation of the environment by gambling contributes to the growth of gambling problems for some people. Could participation in an NCAA office pool lead to problem gambling? I believe that a lot of what is considered “small potatoes” gambling is innocuous for a vast majority of the population, but I don’t believe that any of it is innocuous for everyone. We know that there are individual characteristics that make people predisposed to problem gambling. For exa
