Editor's note: This article appeared in the March 23, 2009, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

Basketball fans look forward to March Madness all year, much to the chagrin of business owners and the delight of Web sites catering to NCAA fans' increased media appetites. With free streaming video of all basketball games offered online, work distractions heighten as the championship game nears, potentially costing businesses billions in lost productivity, according to New York researcher The Nielsen Company.

However, the NCAA junkies may not be as easy to spot in the workplace as you might think. Try looking for the well-to-do green-thumbed husbands who frequent Las Vegas. Above swimming, golf or fishing, 48 percent of NCAA fans surveyed reported that they engaged in gardening activities within the last 12 months, and they are 26 percent more likely than the average adult to have visited Las Vegas in the last year. Perhaps less surprisingly, tournament fans are fast-food and beer enthusiasts, being 34 percent more likely than the average adult to have frequented a fast-food joint 10 or more times during the past week and 33 percent more likely than other adults to have consumed any beer during the past month.

Of the sites visited, ESPN ranked No. 1 in the sports category with 19.8 million unique visitors, followed closely by Yahoo! Sports with 19.4 million, in March 2008. CBS Sports ranked No. 3 in the category with 15.1 million unique visitors and saw the largest month-over-month increase in traffic among the top-three sports sites, growing 59 percent from February to March. CBS Sports' surge was even more pronounced by users logging on from work, where the brand's visitors increased 82 percent month-over-month.