Final Four Fact February: College Basketball Reached The Sports Mountaintop in 1979

Welcome to February, and welcome back to The Press Break’s Final Four Fact February! Last season here on your favorite newsletter, I introduced a running series throughout the Month Before The Madness chronicling interesting tidbits from past Final Fours.

I avoided the 1979 Tournament last season because it felt too on-the-nose, at least for the initial go-around. What more can be said about 1979, which culminated in a National Championship Game that unofficially launched March Madness as we know it.

Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson drew the largest TV audience in basketball history, a record that remains today, and fundamentally transformed the sport at all levels. The subject’s been covered to death, both through the journalistic lens and tangentially in the quasi-nonfiction-unless-reality-was-inconvenient cancelled HBO series Winning Time.

However, on the 45-year anniversary of that seminal matchup in basketball history, a few circumstances warrant a spotlight on ‘79. Chief among them is the resurgence of Indiana State basketball.

I wrote this feature on Josh Schertz’s vision for the program last March at FloHoops, and he made a convincing case. Even buying into the pitch, however, I could not imagine the Sycamores breaking out as they have in 2024, steadily building a case for NCAA Tournament at-large consideration.

Indiana State’s success presumably makes Schertz an attractive candidate for power-conference job openings, including the first to come vacant this year, DePaul.

The Blue Demons reached the 1979 Final Four, arguably the peak for a once-proud program that has been mired in turmoil for the better part of 20 years.

What’s more, the 1979 Tournament featured plenty of other fascinating storylines independent of Bird vs. Magic that deserve your attention. So let’s tip off Final Four Fact February 2024 with some interesting items from the most significant postseason in the sport’s history.