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.
Final Four Fact February: When The BIG EAST Ruled The World
March 1985 is a little before my time, but I imagine a day spent as a teenager then going a little something like this: You walk out of your local two-screen cinema from a showing of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning with a satin Starter jacket on and your pant legs tucked into your fresh, new Nike Terminators. You step into your parents’ Buick and turn …
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.
Press Break Bubble Babble For Jan. 29
As January gives way to February, those first tinges of the seasonal affliction that arrives every March begin to settle in. March Madness is the most engrossing postseason spectacle in sports, but the six weeks preceding Madness’ three are every bit as chaotic — if not more so.
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.
Feeling Blue About The Demons: The Decline of DePaul Basketball Bums Me Out
WGN filled my childhood summers with Chicago Cubs baseball broadcasts and Harry Caray. The Chicagoland network gave me some of my first tastes of the NHL, and was League Pass before League Pass with its regular airings of the Bulls. The Superstation Channel 9 also aired DePaul basketball at some point in my childhood. While I have no vivid memories of w…
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.
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