March Madness History

Events of basketball March madness are quite popular among basketball fans. The origin of this event is traced back in history and at that time the High School Association of the city of Illinois used to sponsor the then small events. High school boys’ from different schools used to participate in the final tournament. However, started as a small association the event has succeeded to grow in large and gradually developed as a state wise institution that overwhelmed almost 900 high schools just within twenty two years, that is within 1930, from when it has started its journey. Then there were numerous teams (Sweet Sixteen is one of them) that unnerved so many basketball fans. In a nutshell, the events refer to basket ball contests between the scores of different teams that take place in the month of March.

The term “March madness” is actually the registered term that has been held jointly by Illinois High School Association and NCAA. In needs mentioning in this regard that fans of March Madness tournaments should be thankful to the person, Mr. H, V Porter, who coined this name.

A brief history of the events:

The years 1940 and 1950 were actually the golden period for the March Madness tournaments as some of the best, rather legendary teams like:

Taylorville Squad
Tiny Hebron
Mt. Vernon’s

Made the records of becoming champions with in 1940 to 1950. However, among these teams the Tiny Hebron team was the strongest one that had been champions for several times, if compared with other teams. It was actually a school that had 98 students only, yet succeeded to win the tournament in the year of 1952.

A few historians admit the fact that March madness has been quite popular among college students in the year of 1980, and that is due to Brent Musburger, sportscaster of CPS who worked in Chicago for several years before he joined the CBS.

The use of the Term:

In the year 1973, the IHSA started using the term March Madness officially during its merchandising and programs. Just after four years of this incident another person named Jim Enright wrote a history of basketball tournaments of boys an named it as “March Madness : The Official Video History of IHSA Basketball Tournament”. Both the videos and the books became quite popular among US people and had been sold in huge number. Very short after that incident the IHSA decided to trade mark the term as ‘America’s Original March Madness”. From then on, the term has been quite popular and whenever anybody talks about basketball March Madness is the term that strikes first.

Present facts:

The charm and enthusiasm of March Madness tournaments have actually increased a lot with time and this American tradition successfully send millions of its basketball betting fans into coordinated frenzy each and every year. It is actually the wildness among the fans that justifies the name march- madness.

The charm and the eagerness still lingers and it is expected that the next- generation basketball players will be able to sustain the same appeal of March Madness.