March Madness is here.
The NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments start next week. Intrust Bank Arena will host men’s games beginning Thursday.
The men’s tournament has grown into a huge national sporting event, with office pools, watch parties and all 67 games on television.
But for all of its glitz and glamour today, the tournament’s debut in 1939 lost money. The Final Four was held in Evanston, Illinois, at Northwestern University.
“They wanted to reserve Chicago Stadium,” said sports historian Chad Carlson. “However, the circus was in town, and so they got … bumped to a Northwestern gym that was actually torn down a year later.”
Carlson’s book, “Making March Madness: The Early Years of the NCAA, NIT, and College Basketball Championships, 1922-1951” points out that the National Invitation Tournament, the NIT, was considered a more prestigious event for years. It was held at Madison Square Garden, the mecca of college basketball at the time. And it paid better.
“It's the biggest arena that hosted basketball events in the world,” said Carlson, a professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. “It drew the most fans. It's in the media center of the universe, or at least of the United States. And so to go play in Madison Square Garden was always a big deal.”
The NCAA moved its championship game there beginning in 1943. The perception around the two tournaments began to change when the champions of the NIT and NCAA met to raise money for the Red Cross from 1943-45, during World War II. The NCAA champ won all three meetings.
“That gives the … NCAA Tournament a whole lot more credibility,” Carlson said. “It's teams like Wyoming, which could have been on Mars as far as most New York City citizens were concerned. And then it's Utah. Those teams beat St John's … sort of New York City's finest.
“And then I think the people … that are attending these games begin to realize that there's really good basketball being played in the NCAA Tournament.”
The tournament never looked back. It steadily grew in stature, using its influence to persuade NCAA members to send their teams to its tournament and not the NIT.
And then came the rocket fuel that launched March Madness into its current orbit: television revenue. The NCAA will get nearly a billion dollars in media rights to this year’s tournament.
Carlson said basketball was made for television.
“Just because of the ways in which you're so close to the action, the ways in which the players are visible,” he said. “There's no helmets, there's no masks, there's no hats. You can see faces. You can see emotions.
“It's really a sport that's built for a television audience.”
Which helps explain why, for at least one month every year, everyone’s a college basketball fan. Even people you wouldn’t think of as fans.
“I remember Bob Dylan was pictured wearing a Shocker basketball shirt out in L.A. one time when Wichita State was making a really, really nice run, and he said, ‘Yeah, oh man, I love the Shockers. I love the Shockers,’ ” said Dave Dahl, part of the broadcast team for Wichita State basketball for more than 40 years.
“It's just great when you hear that stuff.”
Wichita State has played in 16 NCAA tournaments, and Dahl has helped broadcast 13 of them. He started following Shocker basketball while growing up in Minnesota. He said WSU’s run to the Final Four in 1965 is among his earliest tournament memories.
Dahl played basketball at WSU in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But his teams never played in the tournament.
“It would have been a thrill to be able to do that, even to play in the NIT Tournament,” he said. “And a lot of guys that I've talked with that have played in the NCAA Tournament still say that that's one of the biggest thrills that they've ever had in their college careers.”
Evan Wessel would agree. During his five-year career at Wichita State that began in 2012, he went to the tournament every year. That included watching from the bench with an injury during WSU’s Final Four appearance in 2013.
“I remember growing up watching the NCAA Tournament with my grandfather (former Shocker Ev Wessel) on the couch and … then I'm playing in it,” Evan Wessel said.
“You don't really realize how special it is until you get out of the game and can reflect back and and see, like, ‘Man, those runs we went on, going to different cities …’
“So, it's cool, but you … probably don't understand how cool it is while you're in it.”
Wessel, who is now a financial adviser in Wichita, said the energy and atmosphere that surround every game in the tournament is what makes it special. He especially enjoys the opening week of the tournament, which features 32 games ... and plenty of upsets.
“Super Bowl, one day, one game, and it's great,” Wessel said. “But March Madness, that first weekend when you get to see all those games and just the fans … in the different cities. And everyone – whether you're a sports fan or not – being involved makes it kind of the … best event for me.”
Brad Pittman also likes to root for the underdog during the tournament. And he also likes the drama of a close game, like the one in 2018 at Intrust Bank Arena.
“Michigan … was playing Houston, and Michigan has the last second 3-point shot to win the game and hits it,” Pittman said. “And you see the excitement, the jubilation, the reaction from their fan base and their bench, which just went crazy.
“And you also see the corresponding reaction from Houston, where several young men and people were dejected, and rightfully so.
“That's what the tournament is. It's that win or go home, that finality to it that adds a lot of drama.”
Pittman, the senior associate athletic director for Facilities and Operations at Wichita State, directed the 2018 tournament in Wichita. He’ll also oversee next week’s event as well.
He expects strong fan support for the games on Thursday and Saturday, even though it’s unlikely that the University of Kansas – which played here in 2018 – or any other local team will be part of the field.
Dahl, the broadcaster, said that doesn’t matter to true basketball fans. He plans to attend if the Shockers don’t play in the postseason.
“I think that it's an experience that when you go, regardless of whether you're attached to a team, you'll always remember the experience,” he said.
“If you're attached to a team and they win a game or two, that memory will be seared into your memory bank for the rest of your life.”
