1st Televised College Basketball Game

On February twenty eight, a small university in New York, Fordham University, became the first school to be televised in a basketball game. Five months earlier, they were part of the first televised football game, showing you don't have to be a big school to make milestones. Here's a story behind this iconic basketball game. Welcome to Daily Sports History and Meton Reese, your guide into sports history every day. Imagine March coming around and not sitting down to watch March Madness. It seems crazy. It's something we've all done and is a staple of American sports. But before nineteen forty that wasn't the case, as televisions were rare and there hadn't even been a game televised before. It all happened when Pittsburgh University was facing off against Fordham University at Madison Square Garden. There was actually going to be a double header that night where the number one ranked NYU was facing off against Georgetown, and the only reason why this game was first is because it was first in a double header. They later filmed the high profile game after now. The game was broadcast on W two XBS, one of a handful of experimental stations that were the forerunners of the modern television broadcast that we know today, such as NBC, CBS, and ABC, and this was the flag ship station of NBC and at the time, Madison Square Garden was the most famous arena in the country and arguably still is, but was used to play many college basketball games. And we have to remember at the time, even though this was filmed, we don't actually have footage of the game, barely even more than a couple photos to the fact the way filming was done back then is once you filmed it, it was gone. Taping wasn't invented until years later, so you could broadcast it and you had to watch it or it was gone. Very different than today's streaming universe that we live in now. But this wasn't even a big game or big news back then. At the time, barely anyone even had a television, and its estimated less than a thousand people even were able to watch the game. Many people were still consuming sports or their media through the radio and felt more comfortable that way, as we were still learning how to use TV and the television broadcast style that we come to be used to today with commentators different views and instant replay. Even the newspapers at the time didn't make note that the game was even going to be televised. Many people didn't even care because they didn't have the opportunity to watch. But the game itself was a fairly close game, but Pittsburgh dominated throughout the game. They were leading twenty eight to three at the half, and then the Panthers came out and went on a fourteen to two run in the first eight minutes of the second half, creating a huge win and ended up winning by twenty points. Although Fordham would go on to have a better winning record at eleven and eight that year and Pittsburgh would end at eight to nine, neither would reach the NCAA Tournament that year, but they didn't stop them from making history as well. Now you can be asked why does Fordham, a small university, be part of both the very first college basketball game and college football game. The reason being this is a location. They are located in the Bronx, and New York at the time was still a major market and was leading the way in innovation in the field, so they just happened to be a great place for people to try things. Their games weren't big enough that the fans were crowding around everywhere, so they could try experiments at these games, and that's what they did and allowed them to be a forerunner for sports television that we all know and love today. But I imagine that first game would have been hard to watch. There would have been no commentary, just the announcer in the gym, and on very small screens, probably wouldn't have been able to tell really what was going on. But it would have been an exciting time because it was new, never been done before, and it was a moment in sports history that really changed how we consume sports. Thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. Daily Sports History is written, produced, researched, hosted, edited, and distributed all by Ethan Reese. That's me and I want to thank you for taking the time to listen. I really appreciate it. I'm gonna continue making this and if you enjoyed it, please let someone know so that maybe you both can enjoy Daily Sports History every day.