Big money NCAA basketball had its origins in a many-sided conflict of visions and agendas. On one side stood large schools focused on a commercialized game that privileged wins and profits. Opposing them was a tenuous alliance of liberal arts colleges, historically black colleges, and regional state universities, and the competing interests of the NAIA, each with distinct interests of their own.

Kurt Edward Kemper tells the dramatic story of the clashes that shook college basketball at mid-century—and how the repercussions continue to influence college sports to the present day. Taking readers inside the competing factions, he details why historically black colleges and regional schools came to embrace commercialization. As he shows, the NCAA's strategy of co-opting its opponents gave each group just enough just enough to play along—while the victory of the big-time athletics model handed the organization the power to seize control of college sports.

An innovative history of an overlooked era, Before March Madness looks at how promises, power, and money laid the groundwork for an American sports institution.

| Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Basketball's Civil War: The Struggle for American Basketball (1927-1936) 2. Searching for Champions and Finding Enemies: The Rise of Tournament Basketball (1937-1939) 3. The Citadel of Home Rule: The Liberal Arts' Failed War against Commercialism (1936-1951) 4. Barbarians at the Gate:Basketball, the NAIA, and the Promise of a Small College Revolt (1941-1953 5. Rebels with a Conscience: Race, the NAIA, and College Basketball in Mid-Century America (1939-1953 6. Home Rule's Last Redoubt:Race, the NCAA, and College Basketball in Mid-Century America (1950-1955 7. Defending the Kingdom: The NAIA War and the Division of the NCAA (1955-1957) Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index Back Cover |"Kurt Kemper's history on the rise of college basketball is a valuable addition to the University of Illinois Press's Sport and Society series. . . . One hopes that Kemper will follow this excellent book with another on the madness that the NCAA basketball tournament has become." —Journal of Sport History
"Kemper details the unsuccessful fight by small colleges to keep basketball from becoming highly commercialized in the hands of the larger universities, as had happened with football. . . . Before March Madness is well researched. . . . It is well written and maintains a captivating flow." —Review of High Education
"The author has a deep familiarity with and understanding of the subject matter, and he comfortably and compellingly situates Before March Madness within the landscape of existing sport history literature. . . . Unique, impressive, and insightful." —Journal of Arizona History

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Kurt Edward Kemper is a professor of history and the director of the General Beadle Honors Program at Dakota State University. He is the author of College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era.