Terry Frei

Terry Frei's __March 1939: Before the Madness__ is an engaging account of both a college basketball team and its coach and the early efforts of two competing groups to establish a tournament to decide the nation's top college basketball team. Both the NIT and the NCAA tournaments, begun in the last years of the 1930s, have of course survived and flourished. The University of Oregon (my alma mater) won the first NCAA tournament and Long Island University the NIT. Lots of disagreement about show more which was better, good cases on both sides, etc., provide insight into the public's growing interest in basketball on all levels. Frei presents solid, lively accounts of early players and coaches and good background about the sportswriting of the era, including its role in popularizing nicknames for the Oregon teams (Webfoots, Ducks, Tall Firs).

The jacket suggests some kind of connection will be made to the onset of WWII, but there is no real connection, of course, and the"Newsreel" paragraphs are more like interruptions than context. Ongoing references to Clair Bee, coach of LIU and author of juvenile sports books, have more relevance to the main story. This is a good book, not great, with clear, lively writing throughout. Ten pages of appendices provide statistics for the main players and teams in both tournaments. Good footnotes and index. show less

I received this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. My interest in it was twofold--I am a longtime fan of college basketball and I now live in Oregon. The book is a fascinating account of how the NCAA Tournament came into being. It was not dreamed up by focus groups or hard-nosed marketing specialists looking to improve the NCAA "brand," but appeared almost by chance, with no great expectation of huge success. Many college teams were not even interested in playing in the tournament show more that first year. The author has done a lot of research and he tells a very appealing story of the days when schools actually thought about whether playing certain games would hurt the players' academic work, when athletes stayed in school for four years, and so on. The individual stories of the players increase our interest in what happened to them on the court. Yes, all the Oregon players came from Oregon and Washington, most of them from very small towns, but that is just one of the amazing things about the team's success. Throughout the book, the author intersperses the basketball narrative with news clips about the impending World War II. They were playing at a time when the U.S. involvement in a war was hotly debated and controversial. In addition to this explicit contrast, there is another implicit contrast--the tournaments of that time against the March Madness of today, where every second of the experience is monetized by somebody, the hysteria is over the top, and legions of middle aged men make very good livings criticizing 18 year old kids 24 hours a day. The tournament has, for me, become too bloated to be enjoyable. That's one reason why I enjoyed this book so much. At bottom basketball is a game, a wonderful game, and these young men played it the way it should be played. show less

I have a love hate relationship with March Madness. I love it because I love college basketball and as a diehard Kansas Jayhawk fan have had a dog in the fight every season for the past 25 years. I hate it in the same way heavy drinkers hate New Year’s Eve or hipsters hate when their favorite band signs to a major label; the amateurs who come out of the woodwork every March complaining about their brackets being busted and debating about where players will fall in the NBA draft.

I don’t show more like gambling, fantasy sports or the NBA so I’m mostly irritated by the chatter about everything but the basketball games and the unique qualities of a single-elimination tournament where the better team often doesn’t win. I also don’t care too much for basketball games being played in football stadiums (or aircraft carriers, casinos and resorts) but that’s a topic for another time.

Maybe it’s because UConn and Kentucky are in the Final Four this year and the teams I generally root for didn’t survive the first weekend, but this year’s tournament has been especially disappointing. The feeling of dread I feel every March has only enhanced with each game and each tweet I’ve read about how this or that team losing just killed someone else’s bracket (newsflash: nobody cares about your bracket).

For solace I’ve turned to and found respite in a book about the very first NCAA Tournament, which took place way back in 1939, a year when that feeling of dread had more to do with pending war than it did a basketball tournament only a few thousand fans were lucky enough to watch in person. In the book, Terry Frei recounts the journey of the Oregon Webfoots to the first ever NCAA national championship in Chicago and the tournament’s modest beginnings.

The Webfoots, which we know today as the Ducks, were in many ways a team ahead of their time, playing a frenetic pace for their time with enough height, officially and unofficially, to earn the nickname the Tall Firs. Their coach, Howard Hobson, was one of the early masterminds of the game who tinkered and toiled with Naismith’s peach basket game in ways that have become commonplace for modern day programs.

Frei recounts more than just the basketball games. By dropping in short news items throughout, he places the season in context with world events and the coming war that would change so much of American culture. The mini history lessons provide an informative context for the events on the court as the Webfoots’ magical season takes them through a long cross country trip highlighted by a game at Madison Square Garden in New York, a tough Pacific Coast Conference schedule and another long train ride to Chicago for the national championship game against Ohio State.

In the end, “The Tall Firs” were too much for the Buckeyes and took home a trophy that had been broken in two pieces earlier in the game when Oregon guard Bobby Anet crashed into the table it was sitting on trying to save a ball from going out of bounds. As evidenced by the crowd reaction back home recounted here with photos and press clippings, the national title was taken very seriously by hometown fans but at the time. But the second-year National Invitational Tournament at Madison Square Garden was also staking claim on a mythical national championship so Oregon’s win wasn’t celebrated or recognized as a true national championship the way it is today.

There were also no bracket pools to speak of, one and done superstars (there was no NBA to leave school for, after all), shouting sports commentators or even a sellout crowd in a basketball arena, much less a football stadium to witness it. But while Temple University can boast of winning the first ever NIT a year earlier and LIU can claim a national title for winning the NIT after an undefeated season in 1939 (despite playing only one game outside New York City), only Oregon can truly say that they were the original NCAA tournament champs. Before the Madness.

If like me, you’re not really looking forward to the Final Four, pass the time replaying the games and “what ifs” in your head and check out March 1939: Before the Madness. show less

I received [Save By Roy] as an advanced readers copy. I am a HUGE hockey fan and have the utmost respect for Patrick Roy(although as a New York Rangers fan I hate him with a passion.) I was really excited to read this books and I was not disappointed. It was well written and was almost like a written version of 24/7 on NHL network. It had insider points of view that regular fans don't get. The fact that Roy managed to bring this team to the playoffs after being almost last in the league the show more season before (only Florida was worse and they don't count) in the amazingly tough Western Conference was amazing. All hockey fans should read this book (even if Roy made you cry when you were younger.) show less