Today is a big day if you follow college basketball, because the NCAA men’s basketball tournament selections were announced last night. Today, newspapers will have graphics with brackets showing the matchups of the 65 teams, ESPN’s SportsCenter and other sports shows will be jabbering about the picks, and fans of the schools that made it in (or were left out) will be debating the decisions of the tournament selection committee.

In other words, today is Hoop Heaven if you are a college basketball fan.

But there is another side to this March Madness, and it is this: There are lots of workforce consultants who seem to think that the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the focus some people will have on it, particularly this week, is the Scourge from Hell. I know this because I was inundated last week with e-mail pitches from consultants who want to be sources or offer their expert opinions on how March Madness saps America’s workforce. To wit:

One pitched me on how “harmless” (their emphasis) March Madness office pools “can have a significant impact on office productivity” and can also lead to personal problems for an employee, such as developing a gambling problem.”

Another one, from a lawyer, suggested that “employers should be more concerned about their liability should they implicitly or explicitly permit employees to solicit or manage participation in a March Madness office pool that involves cash stakes.”

Still another, from a well-known and respected outplacement consultancy, argued that the combination of the change to daylight-saving time and March Madness could hammer workplace productivity today. “Between sleepy workers, computer glitches and March Madness,” this consultant argued, “it will be a miracle if any actual work gets done on Monday.”

All of this talk about lost productivity due to March Madness is nonsense. I haven’t seen any credible research that supports the premise, and the “data” that is used to make the point is soft and suspect. One consultant cited “an estimated total loss for American businesses ranging between $400 million to $1.5 billion during the course of the tournament.” These figures reportedly come from a March 2004 story in the Detroit News that I couldn’t find on the newspaper’s Web site or anywhere else.

There are lots of things that can distract a workforce and become a productivity problem. March Madness certainly has the potential to be one of those, but whether it is just a minor diversion or major problem is up to the manager. Is this a big issue in your workplace? I’d love for somebody to write me and let me know if it is.