updated 8:24 p.m. ET March 14, 2005

LAS VEGAS - Hours before the first game of the NCAA tournament tips off Thursday, every seat will be taken in the Mandalay Bay sports book and people will be lining up at the betting windows with fistfuls of cash. Those lucky enough to grab a table won’t leave until the night’s final game is over — or their bankroll runs out.

The hotel is all booked up, too, but if a room did become available it would run $599 a night.

Up and down the glittering Las Vegas Strip, the story is the same. Hotels will be packed and so will the sports books, where many fans will spend the entire weekend watching and betting the games.

But betting on the NCAA tournament is one thing that doesn’t stay in Vegas.

In dorm rooms, offices, and homes across the country, people can make a few clicks of the mouse and bet up to $10,000 or so on their favorite team.

And one out of every 10 Americans will carefully fill out their brackets, throw $20 or so in the office or bar pool and hope they can claim bragging rights and make a little money at the same time on what happens between now and April 4.

As much as the NCAA hates it — and hate it, it does — the madness this March extends far beyond the basketball court. Millions will reach into their wallets to back their teams and, for the first time, some say it’s possible more money will be bet on this year’s tournament than the Super Bowl.

Though figures are hard to come by because much of the money is bet privately, one internet betting site estimated a staggering $3.5 billion — about the same as the gross national product of Mozambique — will be bet on the 63 games that will crown a college basketball champion.

“There’s a lot of people who will be betting every single one of these games,” said Stuart Doyle, wagering director at the internet gambling site BetWWTS.com. “People on the East Coast will set at their dining room table betting from 11 in the morning until one the next morning, then do the same thing again the next day.”

Though this city’s sports books are the most visual epicenter of NCAA betting, the $80-90 million that bookmakers estimate they’ll take in on the tournament won’t come near what is wagered with internet sports books.

And that figure itself is likely just a fraction of what is put into pools at bars, offices, college campuses — and even Major League Baseball’s clubhouses.

“I think every team does one,” San Diego Padres’ first baseman Phil Nevin said. “I guess it’s popular. We do them all year — Masters, the big golf tournaments, the NBA Finals, stuff like that.”

Nevin put together the Padres’ pool, where squares went for $100 and the winnings are based on final scores of games throughout the tournament with $1,000 going to the championship game winner. Though some younger players balked at the price, the 100 squares sold out.

“Oh yeah. Quickly,” Nevin said.

Though most of the pools are small and done mostly for fun and bragging rights, the NCAA staunchly opposes them just as it does any other form of betting on college sports.

That’s one reason why Rick Neuheisel was fired from his job as Washington’s football coach after he won $12,123 in betting pools in the 2002 and 2003 tournaments.

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