Ncaa, March Madness at the start today: between myth and business, that’s why the tournament stops the US

It is much more than a tournament. It is a tradition that has been handed down since 1939, it is the same American dream applied to basketball. Enough to deserve the moniker of March Madness, the madness of March, because in the knockout matches anything can happen. Today from Dayton, Ohio, the 2022 edition of the NCAA tournament begins: 68 schools, 67 games up to the final on Monday 4 April at the Superdome in New Orleans, a traditionally reserved football stadium that will welcome over 70,000 people to see the queen of the world crowned. college basketball. It will be the edition of Paolo Banchero, the long man with an Italian passport who with Duke dreams of giving the latest success to Mike Krzyzewski, a coach who is retiring after 42 years. Gonzaga’s favorite, the one that returns to take place in 14 different arenas after the 2021 limited edition by Covid in Indianapolis. The one that, like every year, stops America for three weekends, between predictions (Barack Obama also made them when he was in the White House) and games. We are looking for a new hero, like the many that the tournament has applauded in its more than 80 years of history.

myth

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Student-athletes are on the pitch, but no one has left their mark on March Madness like John Wooden. He is the coach who has won the most, 10 titles (the second, Krzyzewski, has 5) with his UCLA between 1964 and 1975, when NCAA was the most important basketball in America, even more than the NBA. Wooden in 1948 accepted the bench of the University of California at Los Angeles almost by chance: he had to go to Minnesota, but a snowstorm blew the telephone lines and he, convinced that the Gophers had lost interest by not hearing them, said yes to UCLA, a school with a little-known basketball program. He left in 1975, as reigning champion, after transforming the Bruins into an NCAA powerhouse and rewriting every college basketball record, including 10 titles and 88 streak victories (January 23, 1971 to January 19, 1974). Wooden is such a legendary figure that he was named the best coach in the history of basketball, for his methods, studied and imitated, and his relationship with the players. “Success is peace of mind, obtained only through the self-satisfaction that comes from knowing that you have done what it takes to give the best you are capable of” he said to explain his pyramid of success, one of the methodologies with which he guided champions like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Then Lew Alcindor, today’s best scorer in NBA history, arrived in Los Angeles in 1965, won over by Wooden: “The challenge: it was what I was looking for from my school and he somehow knew it – says Wooden’s Kareem in the book. who wrote about their relationship -: instead of telling me how easily I would adapt and how well everything would go, he appealed to my competitive spirit. And I understood that this was the right school for me ”. Jabbar with Ucla won three consecutive titles, dominating so much that in 1967, before the third of its four seasons, the NCAA decided to ban dunks, which were prohibited until 1976. Wooden has become an icon, his model applied to basketball he has also been replicated in the business world, with his books becoming a must not only for coaches but for every business executive. “If you don’t have time to do things right, when will you have time to do it again?” is one of the maxims of him. The incredible success of Wooden and the Bruins is what helped make college basketball a cult in the 1960s, transforming it into an event that all of America is passionate about, enchanted by the stories he tells.

business

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It continues to do so even today that March Madness is a business: this year it is worth almost 800 million euros in media rights with the idea of ​​reaching one billion dollars (920 million euros) in 2026. Thanks above all to the proceeds of the Tournament , the Ncaa this year will distribute around 570 million euros to over 300 schools in Division I. Unlike Jabbar, today the best talents stay in college for only a year, reluctantly “parked” by the regulation that obliges them to wait a season between the end of high school and the beginning of the NBA career. However, they dream of going all the way, of cutting the net of the basket after the victory, of hearing the music of One Shining Moment, the symbolic song of the tournament, immortalizing the last triumph. The March Madness is also this, a collective madness that moves to the basketball court, with the passion for one’s school (the one most similar to European football), which takes over everything. Let the madness begin