'March Madness' Roots Trace To Illinois High Schools

I’m a big basketball fan. Last year, I went to almost every Lyons Township High School boys varsity game, including the playoff game that we lost. The LTHS basketball program is part of the Illinois High School Association. I was fortunate enough to be at LT when Jeff Hornacek played. Hornacek graduated from Gurrie Middle School and LT and then went on to play college ball at Iowa and then in the NBA for 15 years on three different teams.

I love the NBA and the Chicago Bulls, but have recently tried to get into the NCAA “March Madness” craziness. It makes sense, most future NBA players come through the NCAA. While doing a little research on high school and college basketball I was surprised to learn that the term “March Madness” began in Illinois—and not at the collegiate level.

Back in 1909, the IHSA sponsored a small invitational tournament that gradually grew to more than 900 teams by the late 1930s. The tournament was held at the Huff Gymnasium at the University of Illinois. It became extremely popular in a time before television with fans packing the gym with sellout crowds. In 1939, the assistant executive secretary of the IHSA, Henry V. Porter, wrote an essay for Illinois Interscholastic, the IHSA magazine, about the sensation the tournament caused and entitled it “March Madness.” Newspaper editors began using the term during the '40s and '50s and in 1973 the IHSA starting using the term officially for its merchandise and programs.

In the early '80s, sports broadcaster Brent Musburger, who had once worked in Chicago, referred to the college tournament as “March Madness” on the air. The term starting catching on and became associated with the college tournament. In 1990, the IHSA attempted to register the term but found out that an entity called Intersport had registered the phrase on Dec. 12, 1989 for the NCAA tournament. It wasn’t until 1995 that both parties came to an agreement for a “dual-use trademark” forming the March Madness Athletic Association which is a joint holding company. The IHSA holds the high school rights to the term and the NCAA holds the rest.