I was watching Kathleen’s newscast one day last week and she grabbed my attention with a little known sports fact.
When Abilene Christian University’s men’s and women’s basketball teams qualified for the NCAA tournament this year, it became only the third school to have its men’s and women’s programs make their first appearance in the NCAA tournament in the same season.
Later in the week, a couple of us had basketball games playing on electronic devices and I mentioned the “Boss Button” located on the computer screen. If you click that button, the game will disappear behind a fake website. Once the boss passes, you can click the close button to return to the game. However, that feature is not available on the March Madness app.
Millions of people go crazy this time of year with March Madness. I have always enjoyed picking a bracket and this year I let out a big sigh of relief when Duke escaped with a second round win over Central Florida. Wait, hasn’t Central Florida already won a national title? Sorry, that “championship” was in a different sport.
But back to March Madness.
The term was first coined in 1982 when sportscaster Brent Musburger said it during his tournament coverage. The phrase ended up at the center of a 1996 legal entanglement with the Illinois High School Boys Basketball Championship, which had been using it since 1939. The court proceedings led to the highly unusual decision granting each party its own separate rights to the “dual use trademark.”
Many people in Snyder and Scurry County are hoping Texas Tech makes it to the Final Four. I have them in my bracket heading to Minnesota.
Former Texas Tech coach Bobby Knight is one of only three men to win a men’s national title as both a player and coach, joining Joe B. Hall and Dean Smith.
Here are some other interesting facts about March Madness:
• The state of Texas has produced more NCAA Tournament teams than any other, with 24.
• Current Baylor women’s head coach Kim Mulkey won a national title as a player in two different women’s divisions — the 1981 Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women and the first NCAA title in 1982 while playing at Louisiana Tech.
• The oldest coach to win a title was Jim Calhoun (University of Connecticut) in 2011 at age 68.
• Larry Brown is the only coach to win an NBA title (Detroit Pistons) and an NCAA (Kansas University) title.
• The Tennessee Lady Vols are the only team to play in every NCAA Women’s Tournament since it started in 1982. The team lost in the first round this year to UCLA.
• All four No. 1 men’s seeds have advanced to the Final Four only once, when Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina and UCLA did it in 2008 in San Antonio. This year, all four No. 1 seeds are still alive in the tournament.
• At least one No. 1 seed has reached the Final Four in all but three years since the NCAA began seeding teams in 1979.
• The 1979 championship game between Michigan State and Indiana State — featuring Magic Johnson and Larry Bird — is the highest-rated tournament game ever, with 38 percent of all TVs in the country tuned in.
• The first NCAA tournament game was played on March 17, 1939 in front of 1,000 fans in Evanston, Ill. Villanova beat Brown 42-30 in that inaugural contest.
Ben Barkley is the managing editor of the Snyder Daily News. He has covered news and sports for more than 25 years in Louisiana and Texas. Comments about his column can be emailed to barkley@snyderdailynews.com.