How March Became Madness How the NCAA Tournament Became the Greatest Sporting Event in America

Before college basketball became the multi-billion-dollar enterprise that culminates each year in the frenzied excitement of March Madness, it was a game of small gyms, tiny budgets, pioneering coaches, and university and network officials who were deeply suspicious of the intrusion of television into their fiefdom. All this was about to change as a young TV executive named Eddie Einhorn traveled the nation, selling his revolutionary idea of broadcasting college basketball games.

Einhorn built his TV network team by team, conference by conference, and station by station until eventually he found himself beating the major networks, stealing their audiences, and proving to skeptics that the game was about to explode on the national consciousness. Einhorn achieved his greatest success with the first primetime telecast of a college basketball game, the historic contest between Houston and UCLA in the Astrodome in 1968.

How March Became Madness is the fascinating account of how that telecast and its aftermath laid the foundation for what became one of the greatest sporting events in America. It’s an account told through the voices of a veritable Who’s Who of great coaches, players, and announcers, including John Wooden, Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski, Guy Lewis, Joe B. Hall, Denny Crum, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Billy Packer, and Dick Vitale.