WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It is the Monday after the NFL conference championships, less than 24 hours after the nation learned that Tennessee Titans and St. Louis Rams were headed to Super Bowl XXXIV. Time for Laz Vittas and Ben Silverman to join an American institution.

	Laz Vittas, 15, had more than a rooting interest in the outcome of the Super Bowl.

Vittas, 15, sits down at the computer in the basement of his home and begins typing.

"Ten dollars a person?" he says.

"Yeah," says Silverman, sitting next to him, "ten dollars."

Within 10 minutes, the Sidwell Friends School sophomores had created their first Super Bowl pool. One sheet laid out the rules -- winner takes all based on team, score, total points and MVP, in that tie-breaking order. Another sheet was to be copied and filled in by classmates at school.

An estimated 78 percent of Americans have gambled in some form by the age of 18, according to the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling. Experts in the field say young people exhibit a greater propensity for pathological gambling than adults, and that sometimes the consequences of these problems are not realized until later.

But Vittas and Silverman say they're only trying to add a little fun to the big game, just like everyone else. And they do in fact have plenty of company, as dozens of high school students and teachers made clear when responding to an ESPN.com query about Super Bowl betting (read selected responses).

"My dad doesn't really like it," Vittas says, "so I try to keep it from him. But I don't think he really understands. Like, he bets -- he plays cards every Tuesday night with his friends. I mean, he bets a lot, too. But I think he thinks I won't be able to control it, like how much money I bet."

On ESPN

ESPN's Outside the Lines chronicles an American tradition in Betting Billions: Gambling & the Super Bowl, which originally aired on Feb. 4 and will be re-broadcast on Tuesday, Feb. 8 at 1 p.m. ET. Besides the report by ESPN.com's Tom Farrey on teenage bettors, the one-hour show includes segments on the Las Vegas company that set the opening line for the recent Super Bowl, a professional gambler, an offshore sportsbook, a compulsive gambler who tried to stay clean, and a police raid on Brooklyn bookmakers.

Gambling, however small the wager, is part of the school culture at Sidwell, the same private school that produced Chelsea Clinton, Vittas says. He and his friends will bet on the outcome of varsity basketball games, or the number of points an opponent will score against the football team. They gather on weekends on put money on NFL games.

The Super Bowl simply magnifies the size of the wagers -- a $5 bet becomes $10 or $20, and the stakes are raised in the group pools. He estimates that about 75 percent of the sophomore boys at Sidwell had money on the game.

"I think it's against school policy to bet," Vittas says, "but it's not really a big deal. I mean, some of the teachers give pointers on who you should bet on and stuff."

Sidwell isn't the average American high school. Besides Clinton, the small, elite school has served the children of many of Washington's political and economic elite. A daughter of Bill Bradley went there. ABC's Charles Gibson attended. Vittas has served hot dogs at football games to Vice President Al Gore, whose son, Al Gore III, is a current Sidwell student.

Sidwell, like other Quaker schools, also has a particularly strong feeling about gambling: It doesn't like it. Still, Vittas says bets are discussed among students during lunch hour and even during the mandatory Quaker worship periods. He suspects that if anyone gets caught, they would simply be asked to stop -- no suspensions.

Technically, sports gambling for any amount of money -- even Super Bowl pools with friends -- is illegal in the District of Columbia, a misdemeanor punishable by up to $1,000 and 180 days in jail. But rarely, if ever, is the law enforced, said Channing Phillips of the district attorney's office.

	Across the nation
	Laz Vittas was among dozens of high school students to share their experiences and opinions of teen gambling with ESPN.com. Check out the experiences of student bookies, a teacher who uses gambling as an educational tool, and others in a special interactive graphic.

After all, gambling in today's society has become as common, inevitable, and some would say harmless, as jaywalking. The boundaries between right and wrong, safety and danger, have been blurred considerably with the advance of government-sponsored lotteries and casinos, and other societal influences.

Silverman says that he hardly even thinks of his friendly wagers as gambling.

"You could classify gambling as so many things," he says. "Some people say investing is gambling."

Where friendly fun ends and true gambling begins, Silverman is not sure. Vegas? That's gambling. Placing your bet with a bookie? Sure, that's gambling. But forking over a few bucks to a friend because the Rams won by a touchdown -- that's questionable to him.

Their friends "think the same thing I do -- that (betting) makes the game more fun," Vittas says. "And even if they bet $5 and lose, it's worth paying $5 to make the game more interesting."

Vittas' parents, who are both International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists, give him a $10 weekly allowance. So, as with many teenagers, a reasonable chunk of what could be called his disposable income goes to betting. But, for now at least, he is no one's cautionary tale.

As it turns out, Vittas won his Super Bowl pool. He picked the Rams by seven points, allowing him to collect $90 for the pool and another $35 in side bets, plus some favors from friends who now will be driving him around whenever he wants.

If he had lost, that would have been fine, too, he says.

"My mind wasn't really on winning the bets at the end of the game," he says. "I was rooting for the Titans to tie it up and send the game into overtime."

Drama, after all, is the whole point.

Tom Farrey is a senior writer with ESPN.com. He can be reached at tom.farrey@espn.com.