Final Four, the NCAA, trademarks and antedating

[Garson O'Toole]

On March 16, 2010 the Slate website posted an article "Why Is It
Called 'March Madness'" that contains an odd claim about the history
of the term "final four":

There are some high-school basketball purists who insist that the
phrase "Final Four" was first used in connection with Indiana's
legendary annual tournament (which inspired the film Hoosiers). But
the official NCAA story is that "Final Four" was coined by a Cleveland
Plain Dealer sportswriter, Ed Chay. In a 1975 article for the Official
Collegiate Basketball Guide, Chay wrote that Al McGuire's Marquette
squad "was one of the final four" in the previous year's tournament.
Something about the phrase struck a chord with the NCAA's marketing
folks, and they started capitalizing it as "Final Four" in 1978. It
is, of course, now trademarked.

http://www.slate.com/id/2097357/

It appears that the term "final four" was used in the newspaper
coverage of the Hoosier tournament by 1945 or earlier. Also, the 1975
date for the usage of "final four" in the NCAA basketball tournament
can be antedated to 1968 or earlier. Even my perfunctory search
produced results suggesting that the "official NCAA story" is rather
weak.

Cite: 1945 March 17, Chicago Daily Tribune, 4 Hoosier Prep Quintets
Vie In Finals Today by Charles Bartlett, Page 20, Chicago, Illinois.
(ProQuest)

The quaint madness sometimes known as Hoosier hysterics, alias the
34th Indiana interscholastic basketball tournament, will transpire
tomorrow afternoon and evening in the Coliseum here. …
Sketches of the four competing teams, which incidentally can be given
to you pronto by any citizen you encounter here today: ...

BROAD RIPPLE ... Lost only one game all season and that to
Indianapolis Manual by 28 to 27, lowest Broad Ripple result of the
campaign. One of the fastest early scoring teams ever to reach the
final four.


Cite: 1968 March 6, Spartanburg Herald-Journal, The Tremendous
Wildcats by Leslie Timms, Page 35 (GoogleNews Page 33), Spartanburg,
South Carolina. (Google News archive)

He's come a long way since then. This Davidson team might well be one
of the final four. The talent is tremendous, and Driesell recruited
them all.

Garson

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org