All About March Madness

March Madness is one of the most wagered on events in the country today. It rivals the Super Bowl, but in terms of gambling it is like comparing apples to oranges.

Many Super Bowl bets require you to find a bookie or a sportsbook in order to place a wager. During March Madness, anyone and everyone can fill out a bracket and they either do it for fun or place a small—or large wager on their knowledge of college basketball.

Perhaps the popularity of March Madness goes hand-in-hand with gambling. Even the most steadfast anti-gambling person has probably filled out a March Madness bracket.

College basketball has seen a decline in the amount of talent filtered through their ranks. While the game is usually still exciting, it is a little disappointing that many of the top high school athletes have started to go straight into the NBA instead of spending a few years in a college program.

The dam gates really broke open with the success of Kobe Bryant in the league. Prior to that, many high school athletes tried and did not fare too well in their first few years in the NBA, which would have been spent in college, but Bryant has had success from his rookie year of 1996 on and it showed that an 18-year old could succeed in a league filled with players in their 20’s and 30’s.

Yet still, the popularity of college basketball and March Madness endures.

THE APPEAL OF THE GAME

Filling out a bracket is part of Americana. Each year, when March dawns, web sites and cable news networks feature bosses whining about the productivity decline in their offices during the month of March. This is obviously due to the brackets being filled out and workers sneaking internet peaks at the scores or watching the games via the web from their desks once the games begin.

So you do your homework, you slave over the computer or bracket sheet and the results are always the same: Marge from accounting, who does not know a basketball from a hockey puck, wins the office NCAA March Madness bracket pool because she just loved North Carolina’s colors.

Hell, you even spent more time on your NCAA March Madness bracket then you did on your taxes this year—and you ended up in the red on both occasions!

Bracketology has become a science of its own and has become a part of the rich sporting landscape in the United States.

Of course, rooting for your college team does not stop when you graduate and many programs rely on the donations of their alumni to sustain a top flight academics program. Like with any sport there are die-hards out there that would watch any and every game being aired on television whether or not it involved their teams or not.

The other appeal of college basketball is that, theoretically, anyone could win it all.

COMPARISONS TO COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Most will probably acknowledge because of the fact that the sport of football is king in the United States, that college football trumps college basketball in terms of general interest nationwide, but that does not make college football the better sport.

College football has the ridiculous BCS system. A lot of people actually like the system because it does not take away from the pageantry of the regular season in college football.

These people state that college football does not need a playoff system because it already has one with the regular season. If you lose a game, you probably have lost a shot at the National Championship.

This logic is flawed, however because lately the teams that have won the BCS title game have had at least one loss and the 2007 champs, LSU, had two losses!

The other aspect that is false is that it is a playoff system. In a true playoff system, teams play in the regular season and the teams with the best record go to postseason play with a chance to play for the championship.

Ask the University of Utah’s 2008 team how they did in the regular season. They went undefeated but did not even get a chance to play for the championship, which was won by a one-loss Florida team.

Another con regarding college football is the limitation on the number of teams playing at the high level. Currently there are 12 conferences which are contained in the Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly known as Division I, which contain, along with three independent schools, not affiliated with a conference, 118 teams that play on the highest level and have a shot at playing for the true National Championship.

Smaller conference such as the Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt and Western Athletic Conference are not BCS “sanctioned” schools, which means the champion of their conference really has not shot at a national title.

In college basketball there is 32 conferences which take part in basketball on the highest level, known as Division I. The amount of teams playing at the highest level of college basketball is almost triple of the ones in football, at 347 teams.

Unlike many of the 118 teams in the football, each of the 347 teams in basketball know going into their first practice of the season, that they could control their own destiny and walk away with a National Championship.

Sure it is not easy for the smaller schools and small conferences, but at least they know they have the chance to do it.

Which is why March Madness is so huge every year.

HISTORY

Basketball was invented by Dr. James Naismith in 1892 as he was looking for a new organized activity for his young students at a Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA training school.

The game that was played in 1892 showed little resemblance to the game played between North Carolina and Michigan State for the National Championship back in April. Seven to nine players played on a side and a player was ejected after two fouls, but many of the rules in place today, were also a part of Neismith’s original idea.

Just as football gained popularity in the country, competitive basketball began at a collegiate level. The history of this can be traced back to February 9, 1895 when Minnesota School of Agriculture defeated Hamline College 9-3.

Talk about your low scoring games!

Nearly a year later, the rules were refined and the first game played with five players on each side was staged on January 18, 1896 when the University of Chicago defeated the University of Iowa 15-12.

By 1906, enough college programs in various sports were out there that a governing body was needed and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (as it would later be known) was formed.

THE BIRTH OF TOURNAMENTS

In 1937, Neismith invited colleges and universities from across the country to take part in an innovative “tournament” type playoff system to crown a National Champion in the sport, which had not been done before. This tournament was called the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics—or NAIA. The tournament is still being played to this day, and crowns the champion of Division II teams, which is comprised of small colleges not in Division I.

One year later, the National Invitational Tournament—or NIT, was conceived by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association in 1938. The original tournament consisted of just six teams and all the games were played in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The number of teams competing in the tournament continued to grow from 8 in 1941, to 12 in 1949, to 14 in 1965, 16 in ’68, 24 in ’79 and 32 in 1980.

The tournament expanded to 40 teams for a four year period from 2002 to 2006, but contracted back to 32 beginning again in 2007.

The NCAA tournament would arrive on the sport landscape just a year later, however for many years the NIT was the premier tournament in the country because it drew the best college programs in the nation.

In the days before televised sports became a daily event, the best way for young athletes to get exposure to scouts from the fledgling professional league, the National Basketball Association, was to play in New York which would provide a large amount of exposure.

Also in the early days, the NCAA tournament limited the entries to into their tournament to conference champions. This opened the door for runners up to play in the NIT, not to mention schools on the eastern half of the country, which wanted to minimize travel and chose New York City over an undetermined site during the tough travel years of World War II.

THE NCAA TOURNAMENT TAKES CONTROL AS NIT FADES TO BACKGROUND

At the beginnings of those tournaments, it was often tough for sports fans without access to ESPN or the internet, to decide who truly the “National Champion” was as there were now two major tournaments in the country both crowing a victor.

In the early years, many considered the NIT winner the “national champion,” but it was hard to really determine it.

During World War II, the Red Cross staged a fund-raising effort by pitting the two champions against each other. The true turning point between the prestige of the tournaments was seen in this period of time, 1943-45, as the NCAA winner defeated the NIT winner all three times.

In some occasions, a team would play in both tournaments, but only one team, the City College of New York, won both in 1950.

By the middle of that decade, the NCAA tournament was clearly pulling away as it expanded much more rapidly than the NIT: 16 teams in 1951, 25 teams in 1953, 32 in 1973, 40 in 1979, 48 in 1980, various numbers of teams in the 50’s throughout the 1980s until 64 was established in 1985 and lasted until 2001 when the 65th team was added as a “play-in game.”

Today the NIT tournament is viewed as a consolation prize or the battle to be the “66th best team in the country.”

Still, the NIT can provide some excitement that the NCAA does not, as early round games are held on campuses, providing a home college playoff game. This is something that neither the BCS Football system nor the NCAA tournament can stake claim to.

MARCH MADNESS

It is hard to find the precise moment when the term “March Madness” was used to describe the tournament, which is largely played in the month of March, although the Final Four is usually played the first few days in April.

Some believe that the term first was coined in the early 1980’s by CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger in connection with the tournament when he was calling the games for the network.

Musburger originated from Chicago where a publication described a version of the NCAA tournament being played between high schools in Illinois as “March Madness.” This was way back in 1939. Author Jim Enright also published a book about the Illinois High School tournament with that name.

The NCAA tried to trademark the phrase in the early 1990’s after releasing a video game with the name, but the Illinois High School Association protested and it went to the United States Court of Appeals, who deemed that both organizations, the IHSA and NCAA, had the right to trademark the phrase for their own purposes.

BEST GAMES IN TOURNAMENT HISTORY

•    1979 Michigan State defeats Indiana State. By no means was this the most exciting game in NCAA history, but it may have been the most important.

This game was so important that two sports can look to this game as a turning point with its popularity in the country.

The NBA never had a penultimate game like the NFL’s 1958 Championship game which really put the league on the map for the first time, but the NBA, like the NCAA, can point to this game as a turning point.

Basketball was clearly a fringe sport in the country until this game. The excitement of Ervin “Magic” Johnson of the Spartans, facing Larry Bird of the Sycamores for the national title, captured the country’s attention. The larger Michigan State was able to power their way past the smaller Indiana State by 11 points, but the outcome was less important than the game, which launched the national consciousness to basketball at both the collegiate and the professional level where, prior to 1979, NBA Finals games were being showed on network television on tape delay!

Magic and Bird would both go on to the NBA the following season and would matchup many more times and put the NBA on the map.

•    1983 NC STATE SHOCKS HOUSTON. Probably the most exciting Final game ever, the huge underdog NC State Wolfpack stunned the vaunted duo for the University of Houston known as Phi Slama Jama, Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. It set ratings record for an NCAA tournament game and featured the priceless site of Wolfpack coach Jim Valvano running across the court stunned and looking for someone to hug.

•    1966 TEXAS WESTERN UPSETS KENTUCKY. The 1966 Texas Western team consisted of five black starters for the first time in college basketball history. No other team had all five black starters in neither the title game nor the regular season until coach Don Haskins started the season that way. They faced an all-white Kentucky team coached by legend Adolph Rupp.

Texas Western, a tiny school from El Paso won on that night, defeating the top ranked Wildcats 72-65. The story has been told for three generations now and grainy, black and white footage survives from the game as a predominantly white crowd, white press and white officials looked on with amazement.

The story was told to a whole new generation in the theatrical release of Glory Road in 2006.

DYNASTIES

•    University of Kentucky 1946-1958: 4 NCAA Tournament Championships, 1 NIT Championship in 13 years

1992-1999: 4 Final Four appearances 1992, 1996-98; 3 straight NCAA championship game appearances 1996-98, 2 championships, 1996 and 1998.

•    UCLA 1964-1975: 10 NCAA Tournament Championships in 12 years – 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975.

•    Duke University 1990-2000: 2-3 in NCAA Finals during 1990’s.

VENUES

The following are the venues for the 2010 NCAA tournament beginning with the play-in game at the UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio on Tuesday, March 16, 2010.

FIRST ROUND

THU MAR 18 and SAT MAR 20, 2010

•    New Orleans Arena-New Orleans, Louisiana
•    Dunkin Donuts Center-Providence, Rhode Island
•    HP Pavilion-San Jose, California
•    Spokane Memorial Arena-Spokane, Washington

FRI MAR 19 and SUN MAR 21, 2010

•    HSBC Arena-Buffalo, New York
•    Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena-Jacksonville, Florida
•    Bradley Center-Milwaukee, Wisconsin
•    Ford Center-Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

REGIONALS

THU MAR 25 and SAT MAR 27, 2010

•    EAST: Carrier Dome-Syracuse, New York
•    WEST: Energy Solutions Arena-Salt Lake City, Utah

FRI MAR 26 and SUN MAR 28

•    MIDWEST: Edward Jones Dome-St. Louis, Missouri
•    SOUTH: Reliant Stadium-Houston, Texas

FINAL FOUR

SAT APR 3 and MON APR 5

•    Lucas Oil Stadium-Indianapolis, Indiana

---

---

Comments