3/24/1980 NCAA Basketball Finals, aka "Final Four," Market Square Arena, Indianapolis, IN

 41 years ago today...

March 24, 1980 - Indianapolis, IN

In the 1980 NCAA Basketball Finals, Louisville won the National Championship with a 59-54 win over UCLA at Market Square Arena.

I was a college senior and drove to Indy from Southern Illinois with a classmate whose brother worked for ABC-TV and secured tickets and press passes for us. The $15 face value of the ticket would likely buy one Coors Light at the 2021 Final Four.

The seats were up high but at center court in now demolished Market Square Arena, then the home of the Indiana Pacers. Louisville Coach Denny Crum won his first national championship behind the play of "Dr. Dunkenstein" Darrell Griffith who was named the Most Outstanding Player. UCLA, coached by Larry Brown, had a starting five that all later played in the NBA; Rod Foster, Kiki Vandeweghe, Michael Holton, Mike Sanders and James (Jamal) Wilks.

In those days, the final round was a true Final Four, as a third-place consolation game was played immediately before the championship. Purdue with Joe Barry Carroll, the tournaments leading scorer, defeated Lute Olson's Iowa Hawkeyes, led by Ronnie Lester, in a rout 75-58.

The press pass gave a couple of college journalism students a chance to chat up writers and broadcasters at the event for a future job opportunity. We tried networking around the room at the postgame celebration at the host Hilton, before crushing the hosted bar and ultimately closing down the media hospitality room at the 2am last call.

Upon returning to school and our paid jobs at the student newspaper, my buddy and I each wrote articles for the paper about the game itself and the overall experience. We thought we were journalistic heroes who parlayed our surprising access into compelling stories. Instead, we were royally ripped by the faculty managing editor who reminded us that news needs to be timely to be relevant, and that we should have phoned in our stories immediately following the game. Publishing a story Thursday for a Monday night event did not cut it. His brutal criticism in the daily "red line" edition was posted on the bulletin board for all peers to read. Lesson learned.