Hugh Sidey's America

By Hugh Sidey

The thunder you hear on these March nights is the better part of 10 million basketballs being dribbled, slapped, dunked, palmed and bounced in every oversteamed gym and field house and on every chilled and ragged patch of asphalt and on every mud-caked farmyard where a kid can pivot and hook and dream.

The spectacle you see now, and for 60 hours on television, until the New Orleans finals on April 5, has been dubbed "March Madness" by the network hucksters, and it is the grandest play-off of any -- 112 college teams (64 men's, 48 women's) joyfully colliding, with their brass bands and cheerleaders and painted crazies in tow, in cities from Orlando, Florida, to Salt Lake City, Utah. March Madness is one of the nation's three greatest athletic events (the other two are the World Series and the Super Bowl), but it is only part of an underlying phenomenon. Author John Feinstein has described that phenomenon in three books as "a basketball culture," an exploding species of striving that casts ghetto kids with cosmic stars.

At the top of the pyramid are 324 millionaire professionals, whose big, fast, durable bodies do wonders. "Best athletes in the world," harrumphs Boston's legendary coach Red Auerbach. On the second tier, March Madness is the distillation of nearly 30,000 college men and women. And below them lie the foundation of the culture, nearly a million high school players of both sexes (from 16,500 schools) who even now are contesting one another for state titles. And still there are more players in church leagues, the Ys and public playgrounds.

Basketball is America's most popular game. The American Basketball Council, an industry group, estimates that 44 million people in the U.S. will -- between the time they walk and the time they can't -- play some kind of basketball. If you figure in parents and coaches and rooters and the more than 20 million homes that will tune into the televised games, you can easily count half the population of this country as being touched this month by a little of the madness.

A retired schoolteacher in Raleigh, North Carolina, swears that she helps to bring the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to championship form by wearing Carolina blue nail polish. This year she had to search for three days to find the right shade. Dr. Vann Austin, a doctor in Pinehurst, North Carolina, outfits himself, his 75-year-old mother, his girlfriend and his daughter in Duke undies when madness strikes. A starched Atlanta accountant, spied last week glued to a TV set, was asked about his work schedule in the midst of income-tax season. "It's all secondary to the N.C.A.A. tournament," he replied.

Not more than a dozen years ago, basketball didn't amount to nearly so much beyond the community gym. The pros were dismal, near bankruptcy. March Madness had not been invented by the impresarios. David Morton of the Amateur Athletic Union thinks the 1979 game between Indiana State and Michigan State, featuring Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, "lit the flame under college basketball" that carried a new excitement through the pros and down into the high schools.

The pros developed superstars Bird, Johnson, Julius Erving and Michael Jordan, with their mind-boggling athleticism and their equally stunning earnings ($35 million for Jordan this year). A renewed spirit and loyalty swept college basketball as television began to hype March. And down below, in the great dribbling masses, the kids with basketballs tucked in bed with them watched and watched and practiced and practiced and waited. Thus a culture was created.

If Bill Clinton thinks he is going to get the public ear about taxes or health care during this next few weeks, he is mistaken. A congressional aide confesses the three sets in his boss's office are on CNN, C-Span and March Madness. There is no contest. Let the country pause.

Let the games run, and the reveries flow. Out in Indiana, in Butler University's Hinkle Fieldhouse this Monday night, the 1954 teams from Milan and Muncie will join in a reunion. Bobby Plump will be there. Yes, Bobby Plump. For those few deprived Americans who did not see the movie Hoosiers, Bobby is the kid who made the shot in the final seconds that won the state championship for Milan, the smallest Indiana town (pop. 1,000) ever to achieve the title. A Larry Bird he never became. At 5 ft. 10 in., he sold insurance and financial services and never regretted it. He has a memory as rich and deep as the whole N.B.A. He'll tell the story over and over this week and never tire.

On that far-gone March night, when the score was 30-30, coach Marvin Wood told Bobby to dribble around a while, then see if he could get his jump shot off just before the buzzer. The clock ticked down. Bobby was in the sweet spot where he had practiced the jump shot a hundred or a thousand times. Then he was in the air as high as he could go, his right arm raised with the ball touching the heel of his hand and resting like a cloud on his fingertips. He flexed his wrist, and he felt the ball lift off into a medium orbit, and as soon as it began the 15-ft. trajectory, he knew it would go in.

How many Bobby Plumps are out there this week in cracker-box gyms and great field houses, all playing the same game and trying to do the same thing? So good, so good.

With reporting by Brian Doyle/Washington, Julie Grace/Chicago and Lisa Towle/Raleigh