As I’m writing this, the Badgers are just heading into the Final Four of this year’s March Madness, so I can’t talk about how they did. (Let’s hope they won it all!) But a question started nagging me as I watched games: When did they start calling it March Madness? So, you know me, I did some digging for some answers.
I found one source that said sportscaster Brent Musburger is generally regarded as the guy who first used that phrase in conjunction with the college tournament, using it during CBS Sports’ coverage of the NCAA tourney back in 1982. But a number of other sources give the credit to a guy named Henry V. Porter, who wrote an essay for the Illinois High School Association’s newsletter, Illinois High School Athlete, in 1939.
Porter was assistant executive secretary of the IHSA and was so impressed by the phenomenal fan support of the high school tournament in Illinois that he wrote an essay to commemorate it. He titled his piece “March Madness,” and it first appeared in the Illinois Interscholastic, the IHSA’s magazine, in 1939. (A great year, by the way!)
In the article, he said, “A little March Madness may contribute to sanity.”
The term caught the attention of a number of newspapermen, who started to use it throughout their pages, and through the 1940s and 1950s, March Madness became the popular name for the Illinois high school state tournament. Porter left the IHSA to take a job as executive secretary of the National Federation of State High School Associations (from 1940 to 1958).
But in 1942 (World War II), he wrote a poem recalling his years at IHSA: “The Basketball Ides of March.”
“With war nerves tense, the final defense / Is the courage, strength and will / In a million lives where freedom thrives/ And liberty lingers still. Now eagles fly and heroes die/ Beneath some foreign arch / Let their sons tread where hate is dead / In a happy Madness of March.”
Beginning in 1973, the IHSA began using March Madness officially in its programs and on its merchandise. Then, in 1977, the organization hired veteran Chicago sportswriter and Big Ten basketball referee Jim Enright to write the official history of the Illinois boys basketball tournament.
Enright’s book was titled “March Madness: The Story of High School Basketball in Illinois.” The IHSA was awarded trademark status for the term March Madness, and it also registered the trademark “America’s Original March Madness.”
So today, people (like the NCAA) who use the term have to pay a license fee to the IHSA. (A different source said the NCAA is now a joint trademark holder.) The IHSA uses the licensing fees to fund scholarships for Illinois boy and girl athletes to attend college. I love it!
It’s interesting (to me, anyway) that the IHSA was also the originator of the terms “Sweet Sixteen,” “Elite Eight” and “Final Four” to refer to the stages of the tournament. I know we Wisconsonites are not fans of the “Flatlanders” to our south, but you have to admit they’ve left their mark on the game of basketball.
H.V. Porter, not Brent Musburger, was the father of March Madness. Porter was an athletic administrator, coach and inventor. He invented the fan-shaped backboard and the molded basketball, which eliminated the laces, making dribbling and passing easier. He served at the top of his profession for almost 30 years and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1960.
In spite of all his practical contributions, though, his most enduring legacy to the world of sport was the result of that simple essay he wrote in 1939 titled “March Madness.”
So now, every year, when winter is on its way out and we dream of getting outside, this strange malady called March Madness creeps across the country, infecting us with a fever and drawing us back to our TV sets to watch the madness unfold.
Let’s hope that by the time you’re reading this, our Badgers have won their first NCAA championship since 1941.
Congratulations to the Lady Panthers for their own brand of March Madness. I was a very proud OFHS alum as I watched on TV.
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