Silverman: Eddie Einhorn Turned College Basketball Into A Giant
By Steve Silverman
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In just a few weeks, the post-Super Bowl lull in the sports world will come to an end.
March Madness will hit full stride, and the first two days of the tournament will give basketball fans a chance to call in sick – ahem – and watch college basketball for four straight days without interruption.
It's an engrained habit for many, and their bosses don't even throw their hands up in frustration. They take advantage of the opportunity and join their underlings in front of their televisions.
The NCAA tournament is a huge event for those who enjoy visiting Las Vegas. It is the biggest sports-betting event outside of the NFL, and it also gets huge ratings on TV.
However, there was a time when college basketball was relatively minor in this country. You couldn't find it on television, and you had to go two or three pages deep into your sports section before you found it in the newspaper.
That changed in the 1960s when John Wooden and his UCLA basketball team started reeling off wins and championships and gaining attention from national media outlets.
But there was one seminal event that brought the sport to the forefront.
It was game in January 1968 between UCLA and Houston that was played in front of more than 52,000 fans at Houston's Astrodome, then known as the "eighth wonder of the world."
The game featured two superstar centers in UCLA's Lew Alcindor – who would soon change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – and Houston's Elvin Hayes.
Everyone wanted to see this game, and one man made sure it was available throughout the nation. That man was Eddie Einhorn, who died Thursday after complications from a stroke. He was 80.
Einhorn would later become a partner of Jerry Reinsdorf and have an ownership interest in the Chicago White Sox, but he was the individual who helped turn college basketball from a niche sport to a huge monster on the American sporting scene.
He put together the TVS television network so fans across the country could see this epic confrontation. When the game lived up to the hype and Houston pulled off the 71-69 upset to take down the Bruins, the seeds had been planted for the sport's growth.
However, that growth would not have happened had Einhorn not been a diligent farmer and regularly watered and tended to his prized crop.
It started with the UCLA-Houston confrontation and continued with Kentucky basketball broadcasts, UCLA-Notre Dame matchups and a decision to venture down to the bayou to broadcast LSU basketball featuring an amazing wizard named Pete Maravich.
Einhorn appeared to have a magician's touch when it came to putting together a broadcast schedule, and all of these helped to grow the sport and help it become the giant that it is today.
Einhorn was a smart hustler, but he was also well-liked. Instead of being cowed by such legends as Wooden or Adolph Rupp of Kentucky, he made friends with them. He had the ability to make them laugh and enjoy being a part of the broadcasts.
More than 43 years after the epic UCLA-Houston game, Einhorn was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame.
It was an honor that he clearly deserved, and probably should have received at least two decades earlier.
Einhorn loved college basketball from his days growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, and that love only got stronger in his college days at Penn. He became one of that Ivy League school's student broadcasters, and his involvement with the sport grew from that point.
Reinsdorf had a lifelong friendship with Einhorn as well as a long business affiliation.
"Eddie was a creative whirlwind whose ideas -- many of them far ahead of their time – and he changed the landscape of sports, and sports on television, forever," Reinsdorf said.
He was one of sports' most underrated figures, and he had become largely forgotten in recent years. But he is the man who helped turn college basketball into the huge giant that it is today, and all college basketball fans should raise a glass to him on that first Thursday of the NCAA tournament.
Follow Steve on Twitter at @ProFootballBoy
