{"id":3499,"date":"2023-03-21T14:05:53","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T14:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3499"},"modified":"2023-03-21T14:05:54","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T14:05:54","slug":"march-madness-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3499","title":{"rendered":"March Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019m not a particularly big basketball fan, but every year around this time I become more than just a casual spectator. The NCAA basketball tournament, called \u201cMarch Madness\u201d always gets my attention.\u00a0
The tournament that is in progress now originated in 1939, making it almost as old as I am. But the term didn\u2019t become synonymous with the tournament until much later.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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March Madness was originally a high school basketball tournament in Illinois. The University of Illinois\u2019 Huff Gymnasium drew sellout crowds to the high school tournament which started in 1908 and seemed to get bigger every year.\u00a0
The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) assistant executive secretary, wrote an essay titled \u201cMarch Madness\u201d in the Illinois Interscholastic<\/em> in 1939 to commemorate the tournament. Other publications and news media embraced the term and the tournament continued to thrive in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1973, the IHSA officially started using \u201cMarch Madness\u201d in its programs and on merchandise.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1982, Brent Musburger used the term \u201cMarch Madness\u201d when covering the NCAA Tournament for CBS, and it kind of \u201cstuck.\u201d People started using the term to refer to the NCAA Tournament.\u00a0
The term \u201cMarch Madness\u201d was trademarked in 1989 by Charles Besser who worked for Intersport, the company that produced March Madness for TV. For a few years, the NCAA and IHSA both used the phrase \u201cMarch Madness.\u201d But in 2010 the NCAA paid the IHSA $17.2 million for for exclusive use of the term.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So every year March Madness pretty much always lives up to its name. If you lose one game then you\u2019re out, so every game has high stakes. The tournament truly captures the spirit of competition, excitement and tradition\u2026.
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not a particularly big basketball fan, but every year around this time I become more than just a casual spectator. The NCAA basketball tournament, called \u201cMarch Madness\u201d always gets my attention.\u00a0The tournament that is in progress now originated in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3501,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499\/revisions\/3501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}