The Madness of March: Bonding and Betting with the Boys in Las Vegas

by Alan Jay Zaremba

Every spring, the first four days of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament attracts a horde of basketball bettors to Las Vegas. From the tip-off of the tournament’s first game on Thursday morning to the final whistle on Sunday, throngs of bettors—overwhelmingly male—sit in smoky casinos obsessively watching as many as forty-eight college basketball games. This book immerses readers in that action. In The Madness of Bonding and Betting with the Boys in Las Vegas , Alan Jay Zaremba travels to The Strip and gives us a front-row view of the betting culture that surrounds the frenzied first weekend of the tournament.

 

Alternating between humorous accounts of gamblers’ exploits and cultural theories on sports in society, Zaremba provides an engaging analysis of the sporting ritual that such gambling has become. With forays into the history of the tournament, the background of sports betting, and a little betting of his own, Zaremba raises the question of whether this subculture of March Madness is a blessing or a curse—and what, finally, it all means.

Genres: Sports

242 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2009

Reviews

[Marta E C R · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not a sports fan. I am so far from a sports fan that I barely understand the rules of any of the games and have never sat through an entire football game in my life. But I loved this book. Let me first qualify this review by saying (as my brother also did in his review) that the author is my cousin, and who knows what effect that had on my enjoyment of this book? I am not foolish enough to think I don’t have biases. Nevertheless, when I began it 4 days ago, there is no way I would have ever thought I’d give it a 5⭐️ rating. Good grief, even with the glossary at the end to which I referred frequently, I just could not understand some of the betting terms (by the end of the book, I understood them better but still not fully). However, I found this book to be chock full of sociological brilliance. Alan’s interactions with people, his observations, and a description of part of one game in great detail, had me riveted and wanting to come back for more. And there was so much humor - I laughed out loud in many spots. All in all, though I know I will never gain an interest in sports, this book helped me to understand the rationale behind why anyone could possibly want to spend 5 days in Vegas, going from location to location to watch 48 consecutive basketball games, losing way more than winning, and drinking more beer than should be legal throughout the 24 hours of every one of those 5 days. And the Epilogue?!!! Truly an amazing piece of writing. All I can say is, I recommend this book highly and am so glad I read it. Well done, Alan. [I’m also really tickled that I decided to start reading this book just as this year’s March Madness was about to begin.]

[Eric Glick]

Full disclosure - this was written by my cousin.

I enjoyed this book. As a parable of how people think in a largely irrational way about many things and for various reasons, I thought it was profound. It's, of course, using sports betting to consider this idea.

It demonstrates how one finds meaning in the world by giving commitment to something.

[Brandon Challener · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan was one of my favorite professors and this book got me very excited for my own trip to Las Vegas to watch basketball.

[Andrew Kahn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an extremely quick read. The book was entertaining and painted a great picture of March Madness in Vegas. It gave me a blueprint for a story I might write one day. Zaremba gives his take on society as a whole, yet not as much as I thought he would. He also rarely gets into play-by-play except to describe the last few moments of a game that was very close to the spread or over/under.