Aside from the return of Daylight Savings Time and the nearing of spring, the month of March has become synonymous with one thing: the men's and women's NCAA Tournament. And over the years, the NCAA Tournament, filled with stunning upsets, thrilling finishes and edge-of-your-seat drama, can best be described with one word: madness. So it's no surprise that the term "March Madness" caught on. It's catchy, alliterative and perfectly describes the smorgasbord of action-packed and unpredictable college basketball that awaits every time the calendar moves on from February.
But where did the term "March Madness" originate? When did the NCAA start using it? And what about the term "The Big Dance?" We'll take a deep dive to answer those questions and more in a comprehensive history of the term's origin and its evolution over the years.
So without further ado, we're going dancing!
Where Did the Term "March Madness" Come From?
The first known usage of the term "March Madness" in relation to sports, and specifically basketball, dates back to the 1930s. Surprisingly, the term wasn't initially used to describe college basketball, but high school hoops. Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Henry V. Porter, then the assistant executive secretary of the Illinois High School Association, first used the term to describe the thrills felt when watching the Illinois state high school basketball tournament.
The tournament, sponsored by the Illinois High School Association, grew from a small invitational in 1908 to an event with more than 900 schools involved by the 1930s. And boy was it popular. A group of teams known as the "Sweet Sixteen"—you might recognize that term as well—routinely boasted sellout crowds at the University of Illinois's Huff Gymnasium. Porter found himself so captivated by the excitement that he wrote an essay to pay tribute to the phenomenon. Porter's essay, titled "March Madness", first appeared in the , the Association's magazine, in March of 1939. And the term was born. As the Illinois state tournament experienced a boom in popularity in the 1940s and 1950s, "March Madness" became synonymous with the event and was frequently used by newspapermen in columns about the tourney's games.
But it would be many years before it was used to describe the NCAA Tournament.
Where did the term "The Big Dance" come from?
Supposedly, the term, "The Big Dance", another frequently utilized to describe the NCAA Tournament, was coined by former Marquette coach Al Maguire back in 1977. Apparently, Maguire had donned a blue blazer all season long. When asked by a reporter if he would continue the fashion trend into the NCAA Tournament, Maguire infamously replied, "Absolutely. You gotta wear the blue blazer to the big dance." Maguire's Golden Eagles went on to win the national championship, and another phenomenon was born.
When Did "March Madness" Become Associated with the NCAA Tournament?
Continuing the Illinois flare, former longtime CBS broadcaster Brent Musberger, who began his career in sports as a columnist at the Chicago American newspaper, is credited with the term's first usage associated with the NCAA Tournament in the 1980s.
Much like newspapermen did 30 years earlier, Musberger, in a 2019 story with the said he began using the term "March Madness" to refer to the Illinois state tournament when he covered local Chicago sports for CBS's affiliate in the mid-1970sThe term stuck with Musberger, who said he saw the phrase, "It's March madness" in newspaper ads for a 1970s, Illinois-based car dealership touting its sales events in an ode to the state tournament.
Fast forward to 1982, the first year CBS broadcasted the NCAA Tournament. Musberger, the network's host for the event, began to use the term to describe any stunning upsets that occurred in the tourney.
"When CBS took the NCAA Tournament away from NBC in the early ’80s, I was the host for the initial tournament, and we put a bracket up in the studio," Musberger said. "The phrase March Madness had stuck with me from the ads. When we’d have an upset, I’d say, ‘It’s madness, folks. This is March Madness.’ That’s how it came to be. I started to use it, and it just kind of stuck."
As Musberger said, the term stuck.
Timeline: How "March Madness" Became the NCAA Tournament’s Official Name
Here's a brief timeline of the term "March Madness" and its evolution over the years.
1939: Porter first uses the term as a title for his essay in the IHSA's magazine.
1942: Porter mentions the phrase "The Madness of March" in a poem titled .
1940s-1960s: The term "March Madness" is utilized by Illinois-based newspapermen to describe the state tournament.
1973: The IHSA officially uses the term in its programs and on its merchandise.
1977: The IHSA licenses the term to Pepsi and Wilson Sporting Goods.
1982: Musberger uses the term on a CBS broadcast, for the first time in conjunction with college hoops.
1988: The NCAA begins licensing use of the term.
1989: Chicago-based businessman Charles Besser, owner of the company Intersport, trademarks the term.
1995: Intersport assigns its licensing rights to the IHSA.
1995-2000: The NCAA and IHSA spar over rights to the name.
2000s-2010s: The NCAA and IHSA begin sharing the rights to "March Madness" term.
2010s: The NCAA pays the IHSA $17.2 million for Intersport's license of the term.
2016: NCAA introduces "NCAA March Madness" logo for tournament-wide branding.
2016-Present: March Madness becomes a global brand and marketing powerhouse.
The Legal Battle Over the "March Madness" Trademark
The coining of the term "March Madness" by the IHSA's Porter way back in 1939, and the term's first association with the NCAA via Musberger in 1982 meant that the two associations could simply share the phrase, right? Nope. Well, not at first, at least.
The IHSA first began to utilize the term "March Madness" in its programs and on merchandise in 1973. In 1977, the IHSA, according to its website, enlisted former college basketball referee and Chicago sportswriter Jim Enright to pen the history of the Illinois state high school basketball tournament. It was titled . In 1989, a video history of the tournament was produced. IHSA then attempted to trademark the phrase "March Madness", only to find that it had beaten to the punch by the company Intersport. The two organizations then formed March Madness LLC, though Intersport in 1995 assigned its rights to the term to IHSA in exchange for a perpetual license and share of royalties. All the while, the NCAA in the late 1980s began licensing the term, setting the stage for a legal battle between the two parties.
In 1996, the IHSA sued an NCAA licensee, arguing that it held the exclusive rights to the term. The IHSA lost, as the court ruled that "March Madness" had become a "dual-use term." The two sides then sparred over the rights to the name before eventually coming to an agreement in the form of a settlement. Musberger found himself involved in the process, as he recalled during a 2023 interview on .
"The attorneys came to me and asked me," Musburger recalled. "I said, ‘Listen, that definitely was started by the state of Illinois and their downstate high school basketball tournament. It had nothing to do with college. And if I’m called to testify, I will tell you and I will tell the judge that this belongs to the state of Illinois, not the NCAA.’ Well, a settlement was made, the NCAA didn’t argue with what I told them, they paid the state of Illinois…and now they have the copyright to March Madness."
In the settlement, the two parties essentially shared the licensing of the trademark. Then, in the 2010s, the NCAA was assigned full rights to the "March Madness" trademark.
Why "March Madness" Captures the Spirit of the NCAA Tournament
A state of franzied or chaotic activity. That is one of the definitions of the word 'madness.' Few words capture the spirit of the NCAA Tournament better than that word.
Want a frenzy? The NCAA Tournament, in one form or another, has been around since 1939. There have been 131 game-winning buzzer beaters in the tourney since 1944, according to Sports Reference.
Want chaos? Look no further than tournament upsets. The NCAA defines an upset as "when the winning team in an NCAA tournament game was seeded at least five seed lines worse than the losing team." By that definition, the tournament averages roughly 8.5 upsets per year. That's a lot of instances of "Cinderella-stories", or underdog programs stunning the world to defeat a big-name program. According to the NCAA, there have been at least 10 upsets in 15 of the last 39 tournaments played. During that span, two 16 seeds, the lowest seed in the tournament field, have managed to shock the world and defeat a No. 1 seed, a feat previously thought to be unthinkable. Now frenzied and chaotic activity.
And every year, this frenzied and chaotic activity, this madness, captivates millions, who huddle in front of the television to hang on every possession, secretly stream games while they're "working", and carefully research and cultivate an informed bracket only for it to be ruined by upsets. And in terms of brackets, everyone has joined the fun. From former and current presidents to pundits to pop culture stars and average fans, brackets become a fad every March. They're a point of conversation from the water cooler to the local watering hole. And speaking of conversation, the words 'March Madness' have seamlessly been woven into the vernacular with a pair of other words. "That's madness." Those words will often be uttered after a memorable shot, a shocking upset or an emotional moment in the tourney. And the cultural phenomenon has also become a financial boon for the NCAA.
How the NCAA Has Marketed "March Madness" Over Time
The NCAA Tournament had humble beginnings. The first tourney was held back in 1939 and the disappointing attendance numbers resulted in a lost profit. The following year in 1940, the NCAA took a more hands-on approach with the tournament and made a $9500 profit, according to the Organization of American Historians. Fast forward all the way to as recently as 2011, when CBS and Turner Broadcasting Systems agreed to pay $10.8 billion for the ensuing 14 years for the rights to televise the tournament, and it's clear that "March Madness" has become a cash cow.
But how did the NCAA get to that point?
Back in the 1930s and 1940s, the tournament's lack of popularity, as well as the fact that it was not yet televised nationally, severely limited its marketing power. But all that changed once the tournament began to expand, both in terms of the sheer number of teams invited to participate, and in its coverage. The 1960s and 1970s beckoned the beginning of television coverage of the tourney—and there was no looking back. Retail sales began to boom in the 1980s around the time when the NCAA first began licensing the term "March Madness." The rise of the internet in the 1990s and social media in the 2000s and 2010s only accelerated the NCAA's marketing power. It was during those time periods that the NCAA frequently began to utilize the term "March Madness" in its advertising. Two more financial boons for the NCAA? The rise of streaming services in the 2010s and 2020s, as well as the legalization of sports gambling. Today, the NCAA routinely rakes in roughly $1 billion per year thanks to the combination of media rights, merchandise licensing, ticket sales and corporate sponsorships. That's a far cry from the $9500—or roughly $200,000—in profit the NCAA first turned back in 1940.
And it all started in Illinois.
