“March Madness.”
Even if you’re not much of a basketball fan, you’re seeing and hearing this phrase all over right now, unless you’re living in a cave — although perhaps archaeologists will one day find ancient brackets etched into a stone wall.
At any rate, “March Madness” is generally understood today as referring to the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments, which both begin this week.
In fact, the NCAA has now trademarked the term “March Madness.”
But the NCAA did not invent the term. So where did it come from?
Coined in 1939
Well, the answer is right here in Illinois.
According to the Illinois High School Association website, the term “March Madness” was born in the state in 1939 when Henry V. Porter — assistant executive secretary of the IHSA at the time — wrote an essay titled “March Madness” for the IHSA’s magazine, the “Illinois Scholastic,” to mark the state high school boys basketball tournament.
You can CLICK HERE if you want to read Porter’s full essay.
And lest you think this is just an IHSA fable to lay claim to the origination of “March Madness,” the NCAA itself credits the IHSA for the term’s birth.
“‘March Madness’ was first used to refer to basketball by an Illinois high school official, Henry V. Porter, in 1939,” the NCAA confirms on its website in answer to the question, “Where does the phrase ‘March Madness’ come from?”
However, the NCAA claims, the term gained its modern-day popular use for the college tournament due to a broadcaster with Chicago ties.
“The term didn’t find its way to the NCAA Tournament until CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger (who used to be a sportswriter in Chicago) used it during coverage of the 1982 tournament,” the NCAA says. “The term has been synonymous with the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament ever since.”
IHSA makes it official
But before Musburger’s use of “March Madness” in reference to the college tournament, the IHSA began using the term officially in its game programs and on its merchandise in 1973, according to its website.
In 1977, the IHSA enlisted Jim Enright, a veteran Chicago sportswriter and Big Ten basketball referee, to write the official history of the IHSA boys basketball tournament. The result, the IHSA notes, was the book “March Madness: The Story of High School Basketball in Illinois.”
This is all a reminder that while our main attention this month will be on the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Tournaments, “March Madness” also applies to the beautiful frenzy of postseason basketball played in gyms large and small around the country this month — and, really, starting in late February and continuing into early April.
Just this month, in the birthplace of the term “March Madness,” the IHSA Boys and Girls State Basketball Tournaments were played once again, each crowning four state champions in different classes.
Now, as for who coined the phrases “diaper dandy,” “PTPer” and “dipsy-doo dunk-a-roo?”
Well, that’s easy. The and only Dickie V.
