NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The National Collegiate Athletic Association is going ahead with its basketball tournaments, and the nation's other great March Madness – the office betting pool – is going ahead as well.

The NCAA announced Tuesday that it would play the 16 games scheduled for Thursday, even if the United States has started its expected attack on Iraq by that time.

In thousands of offices across the nation, rabid fans and non-fans alike have been filling out brackets, trying to predict which teams will make it to the final game April 7, and who will win.

Given its nearly three-week duration, the NCAA men's basketball tournament has become the nation's largest betting event, with some estimates that as much as $2.5 billion is wagered in office pools.

An estimated $2.5 billion is wagered on the NCAA tournament, most of it in office betting pools.

The time spent on the office pools could cost employers an estimated $1.4 billion in lost worker productivity between now and April 7, according to an estimate by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the Chicago-based outplacement firm. The study estimated salary paid to employees for the time they spend talking about the tournament.

But this year more than most years, that cost is a worthwhile one for employers to pay, according to John Challenger, the firm's CEO.

"Especially with all the worries about the war, terrorism and the economy, companies need to find ways to build morale right now," Challenger said. "The NCAA, and the betting pools in many offices, are a way to bring employees together. It's a good expenditure for companies."

There are some offices where pools are officially banned. A survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that about 30 percent of workplaces officially ban such pools, while only 14 percent have policies officially allowing them. The rest simply ignore the pools.

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The result of such hands-off policies means that about two-thirds of offices have betting pools, according to a survey by Vault Inc., a job-search Internet service. The NCAA is second only to the Super Bowl, with between 60 and 70 percent of the respondents reporting a betting pool. About 75 percent of employers and about 70 percent of employees whose offices have such pools say they themselves participate in them.

The SHRM survey questions whether the pools are a hit to worker productivity. The survey found that 56 percent of HR executives surveyed believed there was no effect on productivity, while 13 percent believed productivity is actually improved by having office betting pools on sports such as football and the NCAA tournament. Only 6 percent felt that the pools hurt worker productivity.

Still the pools pose liability problems for employers who allow them to go on unimpeded, according to some experts.

"Seemingly harmless office pools can introduce the lure and excitement of gambling to the 5 to 8 percent of the population who cannot handle social gambling. A company-sanctioned office pool may be the first experience a person has with gambling, and employers need to be cautious about potentially problematic activities," said David Greenfield, CEO of the Center for Internet Studies, in a release from Websense, a maker of Internet security software, which advises employers to place limits on their employees' access to online betting pools.

Websense says that one of the problems for employers from the NCAA is employees using their high-speed Internet connections at work to check up on the games, maybe even watch Webcasts. Yahoo!, which is showing Webcasts on its platinum service, advertises the offering with the line, "Don't miss a game because you're stuck at work."

"I don't know too many employers who have a problem spending a few minutes a day checking brackets," said Websense spokesman Erin Patrick. "If they're continually checking back to the site or watching them through streaming videos, that's sucking a lot of bandwidth that could be better put to work purposes."

Perhaps one of the biggest winners from the betting interest on the tournament is the NCAA, which sees its television ratings helped, and its rights fee increased, by any increased interest in the tournament from the pools. But the NCAA itself is opposed to any form of gambling on college sports, even modest ones.

"Does a dollar pool impact our tournament? Frankly no," said Bill Saum, the NCAA's director of agent, gaming and amateurism activities. "But the question is: Where do you draw the line? So we draw the line at zero. There are pools on Wall Street that take $100,000 to participate."

The one place the NCAA can ban the pools is at athletic departments at various member schools. It will hold investigations and take action against the school when it learns of such betting, though no school has ever been banned from the tournament on account of a pool. Other departments at the colleges are free to have the pools, though.

"It's none of our business if it's the science department," said Saum.