Are You Mad for March Madness?
By Veronica MacDonald Ditko
An Accidental Anthropologist
For many sports fans, March is synonymous with only one thing: college basketball. The March Madness tournament may be what gets them through winter, cheering their team on. Or the team they are desperately hoping will win the office pool.
I have some skeletons in the closet about March Madness:
1. Did you go to a university well-known for basketball? Yes, UMass.
2. Were you attending that school when they got to the FINAL FOUR? Why yes.
3. Did you watch it? Um, kind of. We lost to Kentucky. But I remember the drunken riots around the dorm afterwards better and lug nuts screaming out of windows all night. I barricaded myself in my room. I don’t think I emerged until I had to go to class again. Or eat. One of the two.
4. Did you ever cheer on the UMass basketball team in person? Shamefully, no. But after the riots, I was a bit apprehensive. You understand, right? But it was my one regret after graduating and moving back to Jersey.
5. Did you know any players? Not exactly, but I lived in the same building as most of them.
6. How did you know? I remember staring directly at their belly buttons in the elevator. The rest of the student population was descended from much shorter people, me included.
I have some more factoids I bet you didn’t know about March Madness. The term “March Madness” is actually trademarked by two separate organizations: the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Illinois High School Association. What? Why Illinois?
Turns out the first group to use the term “March Madness” was the Illinois High School Association (IHSA), which put on a basketball tournament with Illinois high schools starting in 1908. By the 1930s, some 900 schools were competing in it. IHSA Assistant Manager H.V. Porter wrote an essay in 1939 entitled “March Madness” in IHSA’s magazine. Then in 1942, he wrote a poem for the magazine titled “Basketball Ides of March” that again mentions March Madness. The term stuck.
The NCAA began to use the same term in the early 1980s. Many attribute this to Brent Musburger, a CBS sportscaster who worked in Chicago before joining CBS, according to basketball.org.
Today, the more widespread use of “March Madness” refers to the single-elimination college basketball tournament in which 68 teams compete. It lasts for about three weeks.
So the real question is whether or not I’ll watch this year. The answer is probably. My husband is a huge college basketball fan, even took me to a St. John’s versus Syracuse game once at Madison Square Garden. And since his alma mater Syracuse is doing really well this year, I can guarantee we’ll be watching those games at least.
I guess I do owe the NCAA some thanks. In 2009, while we were watching the madness, we liked one of the player’s last names a lot: Collin. The next month, we welcomed our second baby boy and named him Collin.
Do you have any March Madness stories to share with us? Go ahead!
Veronica MacDonald Ditko is originally from the Jersey Shore, but married and settled in northern New Jersey. Her journalism career started a decade ago after studying Psychology and Anthropology in Massachusetts. She has written for several newspapers and magazines including The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Springfield Union News and Sunday Republican, Happi, Chemical Week, The Hawthorne Press, The Jewish Standard, Suite101.com and more.