The 2 Billion Dollar Man: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

[alice wellintown]

Jabbar did not want a bidding war so the teams had to submit sealed
bids to hire him. He was purchased for $1000, 000.

He changed his name. He changed the game. And the TV stations cut up
the tournaments into samller and smaller pieces and made mo money mo
money mo money.



Never a mere athlete, Alcindor emerged in 1968 as a person of
political and religious principles. In high school in the early 1960s,
his racial consciousness had been raised by the civil rights movement,
Birmingham church bombings, Harlem riots, and a racially insensitive
coach. He wore his hair Afro-style, participated in the verbal and
visible "revolt of the black athlete" led by California sociology
professor Harry Edwards, and in 1968 effectively boycotted the Mexico
City Olympics by refusing to compete for an assured place on the
United States Olympic basketball team. For some time he had been
studying Islam, and in 1968 he dispensed with his Catholic religion to
become a Muslim. His Muslim mentor gave him a new name, Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, "generous and powerful servant of Allah"; three years
later he legally changed his name.
The NCAA championship game was first televised in 1954, but television
didn't have a major impact on the tournament until 1969, when NBC's
national telecast drew a large audience, mainly because UCLA was going
after an unprecedented third straight championship.
UCLA's remarkable record--five more titles in the first six years of
the 1970s, including four more in a row--helped build even larger
audiences of viewers who wamted either to see history in the making or
to see the streak end. In 1973, NBC's first prime-time broadcast of
the championship game, UCLA's victory over Memphis State, drew a 20.5
share, a record at the time for any basketball game, college or
professional.
NBC expanded its coverage in 1978 to include the four regional
championship games leading up to the Final Four. Other early-round
games were carried on the TVS network and by NCAA Productions. "March
Madness," as the tournament is now known, became a reality when CBS
agreed to pay $18 million a year for television rights from 1982
through 1984 and ESPN began to televise all of the games that CBS
didn't cover.
The NCAA tournament is now one of the major sports events on TV.
Shortly after losing its share of the NFL television package in 1994,
CBS agreed to pay $1.725 billion for rights to the tournament through
2002. Although no single game draws an audience comparable to that for
the Super Bowl, the total package of games, with its built-in regional
favorites, rivals the NFL's playoff series, the NBA playoffs, and the
World Series in fan interest and television appeal.
The television money has made the tournament the NCAA's largest single
source of revenue by far, especially since the association has lost
rights to most major college football games.

http://www.hickoksports.com/history/ncmbask.shtml