My first lucid memory of an NCAA Tournament game was March 30, 1981.
No, I didn't know the date off the top of my head. Looked it up based on unforgettable details which have stayed with me ever since that day. Indiana was going to play North Carolina for the national title that evening, and my parents were going to let me stay up late enough to watch the whole game.
I certainly watched a lot of basketball prior to that night, but I haven't retained any of those memories. My history with what wouldn't be referred to as March Madness for another year began 3/30/81, for a reason that has nothing to do with sports.
While I was walking home from school, someone shot Ronald Reagan. He was America's president at the time - there was a picture of him on one of the walls of my elementary school - and nobody was sure if he had survived.
At least that was my perspective as a child. The incident was quite abrupt and the scene was cleared very quickly. I saw it on TV when I got home, because it was the only thing the three channels on our 150-pound 24" television was broadcasting.
In 1981 we lacked the technology to quickly produce and distribute even fake updates, so the country was paralyzed by suspense. Reagan was in the hospital and there was chatter the national championship game my parents had decided to be cool enough to let me stay up to watch on a school night would be canceled.
So yeah, this was my first lucid memory of the NCAA Tournament. Now take a guess at which game was the first one I remember watching, and hold that thought for a few more paragraphs.
THE INDIANA HOOSIERS DON'T FEEL LIKE PLAYING in the NIT? Sorry losers, that's what the money is for.
When you're in grade school, the whole world revolves around you, and adults are pathetic naive losers who ruin everything for kids out of spite. As a grade schooler witnessing my first presidential assassination attempt, I strongly believed America needed sports more than ever in that moment. I couldn't believe not playing was even on the table.
Canceling it would be, to loosely borrow from Churchill (six year-olds did this all the time in the 1980s) another disaster on top of a tragedy, wrapped in anxiety, inside a shocked nation's collective disquietude. It turned out that cancellation chatter was rooted in some deeply-rooted memories which totally escaped present-day American grade schoolers.
Eighteen years earlier, another president had been shot on a Friday afternoon, at the peak of another college sport's season. That horrible day felt fresh - not for me - and it was what hijacked racing adult minds while Reagan updates were still scarce. How the country adjusted its schedule the last time a state funeral like that was being planned was relevant.
The morning after JFK's assassination, the Ohio State Buckeyes were getting dressed inside the Michigan Stadium visitors' locker room when they were informed, rather abruptly, there would be no football that day. Not in Ann Arbor, nor anywhere else.
The president's funeral would be held two days later. No adult bothered to tell me about any of this in 1981 because I still wrote letters to Santa and there's no reasoning with the radicalized. This was the right decision in 1963, and what was feared to be the plan materializing in 1981 while IU and UNC were mentally preparing to face each other.
The Buckeyes and Wolverines ended up playing the following Saturday. Ohio State won.
But 18 years later, cable news, not even a year into its existence, not terribly helpful, useful or insightful - some things never change - was reporting that...it had nothing new to report. No Walter Cronkite moment giving finality or relief to what had transpired. For a little kid, I just stared at the screen and waited for a resolution. I waited for basketball.
And I remember the moment it was clear that the president had survived. It was the surest signal that IU and UNC would be taking the court to determine the national champion of 1981. Reagan was alive. He could have been watching basketball in the hospital for all we knew.
My first lucid memory of an NCAA Tournament game was a game that hasn't existed since that day, March 30, 1981. If you thought duh, Indiana vs. North Carolina a few paragraphs ago, you have been tricked.
The NCAA Tournament's 3rd place game was held from 1946 until that very afternoon in 1981 - 35 years of two games on college basketball's final evening. We haven't been treated to one since.
Since 1982, the two Final Four losers have just packed it in and headed back to campus instead of sticking around for one final game to determine sole possession of the country's no.3 team - which that night came from Charlottesville.
While America sat around waiting to learn about Reagan's prognosis, Virginia - whom North Carolina had beaten on Saturday, and Indiana's Final Four victim LSU played each other in a delightful, distracting undercard on the same floor they had played the title teams 48 hours earlier. It came with its own controversy; mini-documentary embedded here:
I didn't know this at the time, but The Oscars were scheduled for that night too (!) and the Academy decided to postpone them for what ended up being 24 hours. So the first college basketball game I can clearly remember watching was Virginia playing LSU for third place while a nation exhaled.
A lot has changed since the 1981 NCAA Tournament. Some baskets are worth three points now. These days, 68 teams get invited to participate, 20 more than were invited the year Reagan was shot.
IU beat UNC to win that title, but currently Indiana - now a football school in 2026 - didn't make the tournament for a third-consecutive season. The Hoosiers pre-declined any invitations to lesser postseason events. And almost 1,000 words later, that's really the point of remembering all of this.
It's appropriate to cancel sporting events when national tragedies, life or death get in the way. But there's no other reason in a wildly profitable enterprise - with modern NIL compensation frameworks and incentives - that we should be subjected to fewer March Madness games, especially late-season swan song matchups.
Indiana doesn't feel like playing in the NIT? Sorry losers, that's what the money is for. Opting out of college sports postseasons almost made sense when players weren't cashing university-issued checks with commas in the amounts.
It's time to ban quiet quitting, and also to bring back the 3rd place game, which was canceled after Virginia and LSU played in 1981 because of player apathy and low TV ratings. A few months later, the NBA Finals were broadcast on tape delay for the third straight year. Business, basketball and everything else has changed quite a bit since then.
Instead of three cringey hours of pregame chucklefucking, America could be distracting itself from - point in any direction and choose the current horror that scares you the most - with two literal Final Four teams playing each other as an undercard to the college basketball game of the year.
We don't need more than 68 teams in the NCAA Tournament, but that doesn't mean we can't get more games out of the ones who are already in it. Despite what I thought on the afternoon of March 30, 1981 - America got everything right that day. Those naive joy-killing adults don't always screw everything up.
They waited until the president was confirmed to be on the road to recovery to make a basketball decision. And they held a 3rd place game to whet our appetites and create a beautiful distraction from the day that was. More sports. Not less.
Bring back the championship night double-header. Sorry, kids. That's what the money is for.
