COLUMN: No one is immune to the Madness

From Andrea Ahles's, "Hawaiian Style," Fall '97 From Andrea Ahles's, "Hawaiian Style," Fall '97 Once a year, college students get swept up into one sport for an entire month. Tonight, after a month of madness, the culmination will arrive. The final two, Arizona and Kentucky, will go head to head for the NCAA basketball championship title. While The Daily Pennsylvanian sponsors a modest Sweet 16 contest for members of the University community to participate in, there are pools all over the nation for the avid college basketball fan to take part in. ESPN sponsors one such pool over the Internet and had over 175,000 entries to win a trip to next year's Final Four in San Antonio, Texas, for correctly choosing this year's basketball champion. Getting a ticket to see the Final Four in person is about as competitive as actually making it to the final game as a player. While the NCAA makes a certain amount of tickets available to the general public through a lottery system a year in advance of the game, you need the luck of the Irish if you're to get a seat in front of the action. But how did this phenomenon we know as March Madness get started? The NCAA tournament originated in order to challenge the National Invitational Tournament. It's obvious which of the two tournaments is now considered more prestigious. The Big Dance also wasn't always this big. The first NCAA championship wasn't even founded by the NCAA. Instead, in 1939, the National Association of Basketball Coaches organized the first championship, held at Northwestern University. Unlike the multi-million dollar tournament we see each year, the first Final Four lost $2,531. It was after that year the NABC turned over the tournament to be handled by the NCAA. A large crowd of 15,000 spectators cheered on Oregon as it defeated Ohio State for the title, 46-33. Philadelphia's own Villanova was a member of the first Final Four, but lost to Oklahoma in the consolation game. The 64-team tournament format has only been in place since 1983. In fact, the first tournament only featured eight teams. Every year there is a No. 1 team -- the one that is supposed to go all the way, the one that no one is going to beat without some divine intervention. Sometimes, that No. 1 team does win it all. But most, like this year's pre-tourney favorite, lose their infallibility and are defeated. Kansas may have been 34-1 in the regular season this year, but the Jayhawks couldn't win six games in a row when it counted. Then there is the Cinderella team, the unerdog that was supposed to get ousted in the first round but somehow made it to the Sweet 16 by upsetting a few top seeds. Tennessee-Chattanooga is hardly one of basketball's perennial powerhouses, but ,by beating third-seeded Georgia and sixth-seeded Illinois, people began to talk about this dazzling new edition to the Big Dance. But soon, the team's coach turns into a pumpkin and it too have exits the tournament, much to the dismay of those who bet money on an upset. At Penn, students are a bit more subdued about the Final Four than those at Minnesota, Kentucky, Arizona and North Carolina -- mostly because the Quakers were unable to earn a bid to this year's tourney. But I remember fondly how March Madness spread through Penn's campus like wildfire two years ago. Although I did not drive down to Baltimore to see the Quakers take on Alabama in the tournament's opening round, expectations were running high that the Quakers just might make it to the second round. After all, we had beaten Michigan that year in the Wolverines' Crisler Arena and had swept through the Ivy League season unscathed. But tonight is the showdown that counts -- the matchup between the Wildcats of Kentucky and the Wildcats of Arizona. Will Arizona be able to continue its winning ways with Miles Simon and Mike Bibby leading the way? Or will Kentucky repeat as champion despite losing four starters from last year's title-winning team? Will Arizona coach win his first NCAA title, or will Rick Pitino of Kentucky win his second in as many years. The teams have only met twice in the schools' histories -- both meetings won by Kentucky. Who will win tonight? This strange phenomenon surrounding college basketball is not easily explainable. Watching a group of 20-something men running up and down a hardwood court trying to throw an orange ball into a basket 10-feet high can't be that much fun. Phrases like March Madness, Sweet 16, Elite 8 and the Big Dance are absurd. Who thought of them anyway? It's the exciting atmosphere, the possibility that anything can happen and the idea that anyone can win that makes the Final Four so magical. So grab a beer, and enjoy tonight's game. Go Wildcats!