Pentagon Warns Employees Not To Stream NCAA Tournament

Today is the day when you will get very little done at the office. In that it is much like every other day, except today you have the supremely valid excuse of NCAA tournament first-round games on all day. The military-industrial complex, which is no doubt rooting for Duke, knows what’s up.

CBS News obtained this letter from the Joint Service Provider, which handles IT for the Pentagon:

CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED

JSP Notice: March Madness Video Streaming and Network Consumption

SUMMARY: March Madness is officially upon us. Your JSP support team acknowledges and appreciates that college basketball fans within the DoD are excited to cheer on their favorite teams, update brackets, and otherwise obsess over the Big Dance. In preparation for the event, JSP engineers will closely monitor bandwidth consumption and server availability to handle additional network strain as best as they can. However, it is important to remember that we share a single network and visiting non-mission essential websites degrades network performance for everyone.

Please keep in mind; if you’re streaming video to watch your favorite player shooting free throws, you’re consuming network resources that could be served to support the Warfighter.

If you experience any questions or concerns, please contact the JSP Service Desk for assistance.

Sincerely,

Joint Service Provider (JSP)

Communications

This does not apply to you! Your job is surely unimportant, and your employer will not miss or even notice the absence of your feeble contributions, so you should watch basketball without guilt today. Take a long lunch while you’re at it. You worked hard enough just getting up this morning.