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The Road to Now

#266 College Basketball: The Story of March Madness w/ Dana O'Neil

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8629 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Athletic's Dana O'Neil joins Bob & Ben for a conversation about the history of the NCAA tournament, how college basketball built the fan base it has today, and how rule changes have changed the sport from the 3-point line to the more recent Name, Image & License (NIL) contracts that allow college athletes to receive compensation for playing.

Dana O'Neil is a Senior Writer for The Athletic, and one of the country's foremost experts on college basketball.

You can hear the uncut version of this conversation and many more by supporting us on Patreon. Click here for more info!

This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher. 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm Bob Crawford.

0:07.1

I've been Sawyer, and this is the road to now, and it is March.

0:12.5

March Madness, it's here.

0:14.4

That's right.

0:14.9

We had so much fun talking to Jordan Gross a couple weeks ago about football that we were like, hey, let's,

0:22.4

let's look at the history of the NCAA tournament, basketball tournament, and look at some of the

0:31.7

changes it's gone through over the years and, you know, some of the changes that college basketball has gone through over the years.

0:39.9

And we have the perfect guest to tell this story today.

0:45.1

That's right. Dana O'Neill, who is from The Athletic. Last week, we reshare this great story

0:53.1

that Jason Stark told, your colleague there.

0:56.2

And now we're, it's like a masterclass on sports journalism around here.

1:00.3

And Dana, welcome to the show.

1:01.9

Thank you for having me.

1:02.9

And I will seed that title to Jason for sure.

1:06.0

I've known Jason for a thousand years and he is one of the best.

1:09.5

That's great.

1:10.1

Can we just start off here?

1:11.4

All right.

1:11.7

Can I just start off telling you guys a joke that Dane Honeycutt's father told me in 2009?

1:18.5

Okay.

1:19.5

Hey, did you guys hear about the new dress code at the NCAA tournament this year?

1:23.9

Have not.

...

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