If you are a college basketball fan, the snippet is like finding video evidence of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Or the Magna Carta. Or the separating of the light from the darkness. This was the precise moment when history changed for good, and forever.
Here is Bryant Gumbel, in an NBC television studio, wearing a dark blue blazer and explaining to viewers watching the 1981 NCAA basketball tournament that they are being momentarily taken from the Kansas State-Oregon State game at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion and moved, via the magic of TV, some 1,400 miles east.
“We’ve got a one-point game in Austin, Texas,” Gumbel says, “so let us go back to Marv Albert and Bucky Waters …”
Suddenly we see an Arkansas player named U.S. Reed zig-zagging his way up the court and the first thing you realize, with your 2012 eyes, is this: “They didn’t wait.”
Thirty-one years later, Marv Albert laughs and says, “They didn’t know to wait. When the game was ready, they played it. And you had to catch up.”
So Marv caught up. We have already missed the inbounds pass and two seconds of Reed’s serpentine journey at the Irwin Center. Louisville, the defending national champion, is leading Arkansas 73-72 although you wouldn’t know it, because the score isn’t on the screen. Only the clock is. Here’s Marv, 1981:
“Thank you, Bryant … time running down, Arkansas having trouble getting it down … U.S. Reed with the fling …”
On the screen Reed, remarkably, from a step on the wrong side of midcourt, has the presence of mind to set himself before unleashing a heave …
“… IT’S IN! IT’S IN! U.S. Reed has made … do they say it counts?! IT’S ALL OVER!”
Waters: “O my …”
“Arkansas … has DEFEATED Louisville! U.S. REED hitting from HALFCOURT … and it’s a one-point, INCREDIBLE WIN for the RAZORBACKS …”
Marv, 2012: “That was the kind of shot that needed more than just a ‘Yes!’ ”
So you say: It is March, it’s the NCAA Tournament, isn’t that why they call it Madness? And you are correct. That very moment, that very day, is why.
Because moments after Reed and Eddie Sutton and the rest of the Hogs were seen racing off the court in Austin, Gumbel threw it back to Pauley Pavilion, just in time for the country to watch a Brooklyn kid named Rolando Blackman drill a baseline jumper to beat Oregon State, ranked No. 2 in the country, 50-48 …
… and moments after that, Gumbel guided the country from Westwood, Calif., to Dayton, Ohio, just as Skip Dillard, a guard for the No. 1 team in the nation, DePaul, gagged the front end of a one-and-one, allowing St. Joseph’s Bryan Warrick to find John Smith all alone for a lay-up at the horn that sealed a stunning 49-48 win for the Hawks.
“That was the first year when NBC decided to take some chances with the tournament,” Albert remembers. “They would switch out of a bad game and go to a better one. Or go to the end of a close game. It sounds routine now. But then?”
Suddenly, thanks to a perfect storm of fantastic finishes, a notion was born: You couldn’t just watch NCAA Tournament games; you could watch the tournament itself. The NCAA may have been born as a neat, eight-team event in 1939. Thirty-one years ago today, it became something else, something more resembling the national holiday that starts tomorrow.
Also born that day was an annual frustration with NBC, ESPN or CBS when the networks would stay with bad games too long, or split screens, and of course now fans can be their own directors, watching every game on their mobile devices or, if they have access to TBS, TNT and truTV, switching themselves with the click of a remote control.
And all of that started March 14, 1981, when Ulysses (U.S.) Reed thought to gather himself before letting her fly. Years later, Reed would chuckle and say, “Every time I’m in a gym, no matter where I am, guys of a certain age will shoot from halfcourt and scream, ‘U.S. Reeeeeed!’ ” Such are the things that can happen when neat little events become national sporting treasure.