How many viewers would tune in for the first regular-season college basketball game broadcast nationally in prime time? His status remained in doubt and Wooden later said he gave Alcindor the option to sit out against Houston.“Now a scratched eyeball may not be much of a problem for a guitar player or a well digger, but it’s a disaster for a basketball player,” Alcindor wrote in Sports Illustrated in 1969. Eventually Eddie Einhorn, who became president of the Chicago White Sox years later, paid $27,000 to syndicate the game through TV Sports Inc. “It’s made showmen out of the players and that hurts team play. What has been built now may be the top of the tree. It was almost like being under a microscope. What happened was the game became close and was interesting and building momentum and he was indeed taking Madison Avenue orders, hand-writing those 10-second drop-ins I was reading the second half, so he could make a few thousand more bucks.“It was a tough enough assignment, then you’ve got to read somebody’s writing when you’re trying to sell something you’ve never seen before.”UCLA was hampered by Alcindor’s health. That national telecast went to two cities; Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio. What is certain is that it eventually landed in the lap of Eddie Einhorn, a young television entrepreneur who looked into the future and saw college basketball as a major nationwide TV opportunity.What he needed was one chance to show it, and here it was. That was clear early, and as viewers around the nation caught on, so did advertisers. Get the bracket, schedule and scores here. The 1969 NCAA University Division Men's Basketball Tournament involved 25 schools playing to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball.It began on March 8, 1969, and ended with the championship game on March 22 in Louisville, Kentucky.Including consolation games in each of the regions and an overall consolation game, a total of 29 games were played. He wanted people to find out who Elvin Hayes was.“We ran down the ramp and they had a red carpet all the way out on the field.
I still get goose bumps when I think about it, it kind of reminded me how the gladiators must have felt back in Roman times. The faces of that night begin to vanish.“It put the University of Houston on the map,” Lorch said. . Put together a syndicated collection of channels around the country –something no one had ever even tried before – and pair mighty UCLA and Wooden and Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) with unbeaten Houston and Lewis and Hayes.Let Enberg take it from there. He said he believed it was the most important sporting event he broadcast.“[The game] was absolutely critical in catapulting college basketball to the level of popularity we know today,” Enberg wrote in his memoir ‘Oh My!’Organizers faced a basic problem before the history making night. The networks were way, way behind Eddie Einhorn.”Einhorn died during the past season, as did Lewis. !”Alcindor played all 40 minutes but didn’t resemble the best player in the country. That was it. A year after the game, NBC paid $500,000 to broadcast the NCAA tournament, which was then comprised of 25 teams.