Sadly, this past week saw the conclusion of the 2021-22 National Collegiate Athletic Association Basketball Season.
“Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December But the days grow short when you reach September …” as the lines from the beautiful “September Song” from “Knickerbocker Holiday” reflect. So, the Willard basketball crew will have to put our hoops hopes on hold for six months.
Wait, what got us talking about basketball?
It was the phrase the “Blue Bloods of college basketball are meeting in the Final Four.”
Our university — which has won the most college basketball games ever — was mentioned along with Duke University and the University of North Carolina. Villanova University is also a strong basketball school but lacks the history of the other three.
I probably don’t need to mention who won the NCAA Men’s Championship (Kansas).
Many of the “color commentators” regularly mentioned the “Blue Bloods” in between telling us what we just watched on TV. It made me wonder if they thought we were listening to radio or just tuned in by accident.
No matter, the issue here is the use of the term “Blue Bloods.”
Most of us would know that implies the elite or royalty but first we need to consider “March Madness.”
The term wasn’t coined by some sportswriter or announcer. That distinction belongs to Henry V. Porter a teacher and coach at Athens High School in Illinois.
In 1924, he led the Athens’ boys basketball team to a second place finish in the state tournament. Hank then moved on to become assistant executive secretary of the Illinois High School Athletic Association.
He became so infatuated with basketball — I can understand that — that he wrote an essay titled “March Madness” in the “Illinois High School Athlete,” the official magazine of the IHSA in 1939.
He wrote that a “little March madness may complement and contribute to sanity and keep society on an even keel.” Little did he know what March Madness would become in the 21st century.
Coincidentally, that was the first year that the NCAA held its first men’s basketball championship; Oregon defeated Ohio State University (before it became “the”) 46-33 (That tournament lost about $2,600, probably the last time that the tournament lost money).
March Madness spread from Illinois high schools to the NCAA until it’s a billion dollar business counting gate receipts, television revenues, concessions, parking fees, and of course, merchandise (yes, I have some).
“Meanwhile back at the ranch” (from a 1950s novelty record), we began by discussing the origin of the term Blue Bloods so we should continue.
Let’s start with the blood actually shed during basketball games. I can attest to the fact that an elbow in the forehead brings red blood until “butterflied” and the cuts inflicted in today’s collision basketball displayed that during the recent tournament.
Thus, Blue Blood is not a reflection of sports’ injuries.
We can trace it back to Spain. The country was originally colonized by peoples descended from the Goths who were a light-skinned folk and the blood in their veins appeared blue against their light skin.
Then the Moors, a dark-skinned people, moved in. Their dark skin did not showcase their blood as blue.
During their occupation many a “blue-blooded” Castilian or Aragonian intermarried with a Moor and result was a darker-skinned product.
When the Spanish finally ejected the Moors, those who had avoided intermarriage proclaimed themselves a superior breed sporting “Sangre azul” (Blue Blood) because their white skin allowed the blue of their veins to stand out.
No genetic testing supported their superior claims but the term stuck and in the 19th century the Brits picked up Blue Bloods to describe their nobility and elites in society.
In 1834, a children’s writer wrote in her novel “Helen,” “… (Someone) from Spain, of high rank and birth, of the sangre azul, the blue blood.”
This was easy for them because if you actually worked outside (even In Britain) your arms developed a bit of a suntan indicating you weren’t of the noble class.
An interesting twist to the term has some of today’s Brits describing prestigious universities such as Cambridge and Oxford as “blue-brick” universities.
Through the years, it has become convenient to use Blue Bloods to delineate the premier programs in college sports.
To be fair, I have never heard any of the schools themselves call their programs Blue Bloods. However, sports broadcasting has never been known to eschew hyperbole so, in particular, March Madness will continue to see the best programs through decades called Blue Bloods despite the red blood shed on the court to pay for success.
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April 17, 2022 at 05:44AM
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Trivially Speaking: During March Madness the ‘Blue Bloods’ flow - Loveland Reporter-Herald
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