March Madness History
Written March 16, 2009 by Jack Jones
With the men’s college basketball tournament upon us, let’s take a look back at how we got here. What follows is a time line-like list of important dates of events that have happened throughout the history of March Madness. Bet on the games in this season’s tournament, and check out the some of the tournament futures at Sportsbook.com.
1939 - This is the year of the very first NCAA championship. There were only 8 teams invited to the tournament. The first ever champion in NCAA basketball history was Oregon, who defeated Ohio State by a score of 46-33.
1951 - The NCAA expands the field in the tournament to 16 teams. The Kentucky Wildcats end up winning the championship, their 3rd in 4 years. Kentucky now has a total of 7 NCAA Championships, second only to UCLA’s 11.
1952 - The Final Four is introduced. This is the first time teams were separated into regions with the winners of each region squaring off to find out who would end up in the finals.
1953 – The Tournament starts to gain popularity so the NCAA expands even more to allow 22 teams to enter the tournament. The Indiana Hooisers are crowned tournament champs, their second of an eventual five tournament wins.
1957 - This is the year that the phrase “March Madness” enters the American lexicon. It is used to describe the year’s championship game between North Carolina and a Wilt Chamberlin-lead Kansas team. UNC won the game in triple-overtime, their first of four NCAA Championships.
1966 - Texas Western (now known as UTEP) win the NCAA tournament as the first team with 5 African-American starters. The win came over Kentucky who, at the time, had 0 black starters. The color barrier is forever broken college basketball and the NCAA Tournament is established as the predominant tournament in college basketball after battling for years with the NIT.
1975 - With more an more interest growing in the tournament, the NCAA expands the field to 32. The hope is that more teams will increase national exposure by allowing teams with little or no media coverage but a large fan base into the tournament.
1979 - The tournament field is expanded to 40 teams, but the real story was the Championship game between Indiana State and Michigan State, led by Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, respectively. This remains the most watched college basketball game of all-time to this day.
1985 – The modern bracket is born when the NCAA decides to expand the field to a total of 64 teams. This season also marks the year that the lowest seed ever won the championship with 8th seeded Villanova beating Big East rival Georgetown and Patrick Ewing for the title.
2001 – A “Play-In” game is introduced, essentially expanding the field to 65 teams, with the winner of the play-in earning the final 16th seed in the tournament.
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