Friday, March 20, 2009

The BIG Question In March '09: Who Owns The Copyright To "One And Done"?

A review of this blogger's '09 bracket reveals a host of teams that are "one and done." So much for the riches of the pool that contains my $5 investment. Perhaps this blog can be the source of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. "One and done" means that this blogger is owed a royalty payment from all of the poor souls who put forward the last of their discretionary income for '09. The slogan, "One and done" describes the vast majority of the teams in "March Madness." "One and done" and "One out of sixty-four": same sucker odds. If this is (fair & balanced) March Reality, so be it.

[x Slate]
Why Is It Called "March Madness"?
By Brendan I. Koerner

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The NCAA men's basketball tournament, which tipped off today, is colloquially known as "March Madness." Other staples of the 65-team tourney's unique lingo include "Sweet 16," "Final Four," and the "Big Dance." How and when did these terms originate?

March Madness traces back to Illinois' statewide high-school basketball tournament, which began in 1908. In 1939, an official with the Illinois High School Association, Henry V. Porter, penned an article called "March Madness" for the organization's in-house magazine. "A little March madness may complement and contribute to sanity and help keep society on an even keel," he wrote. Three years later, he followed up with a poem, "Basketball Ides of March," which read in part: "A sharp-shooting mite is king tonight/ The Madness of March is running."

The phrase was confined to Illinois high-school ball until 1982, when CBS broadcaster (and ex-Chicago Daily News sportswriter) Brent Musburger used it during his network's NCAA tournament coverage. The IHSA, meanwhile, applied to trademark "March Madness" in 1989. The NCAA and IHSA clashed in 1996, when the IHSA sued to stop GTE, an NCAA corporate partner, from distributing a CD-ROM game bearing the March Madness title. The NCAA contended that it had a common-law trademark on the phrase and was thus allowed to license it at will. The 7th Circuit Court sided with the NCAA, but its ruling was vague enough to open the door for future litigation. Rather than endure more rounds in court, the two sides agreed to form the March Madness Athletic Association, a joint holding company. The IHSA controls the name on the high-school level, while the NCAA has a perpetual license to use the phrase in connection with its (much larger) collegiate tournament.

A similar clash occurred in the late 1990s over "Sweet 16," tourney slang for the third round. CBS commentators started using the phrase in the late 1980s, after the tournament field expanded from 53 to 64 teams. Unfortunately for the NCAA, the phrase (using both "16" and "Sixteen") was trademarked by the Kentucky High School Athletic Association in 1988, as a handle for its annual championship tournament. Perhaps mindful of the March Madness precedent, however, the KHSAA chose to bargain with the NCAA rather than litigate. The two sides struck a deal similar to the one between the IHSA and the NCAA, splitting control along scholastic-collegiate lines. (The NCAA also owns the trademark to "Elite Eight," though the exact origins of that phrase are unclear.)

There are some high-school basketball purists who insist that the phrase "Final Four" was first used in connection with Indiana's legendary annual tournament (which inspired the film "Hoosiers"). But the official NCAA story is that "Final Four" was coined by a Cleveland Plain Dealer sportswriter, Ed Chay. In a 1975 article for the Official Collegiate Basketball Guide, Chay wrote that Al McGuire's Marquette squad "was one of the final four" in the previous year's tournament. Something about the phrase struck a chord with the NCAA's marketing folks, and they started capitalizing it as "Final Four" in 1978. It is, of course, now trademarked. (College hockey is stuck with the nickname "Frozen Four" for its national semifinals.)

The origin of "Big Dance" is seemingly lost to history, at least in terms of who first used it as a synonym for March Madness. Nevertheless, the NCAA trademarked the phrase in 2000.

Next question? ♥

[Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor for Wired, a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate, and a fellow at the New America Foundation. His first book — Now the Hell Will Start — was published by The Penguin Press in 2008.]

Copyright © 2004 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co.

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Go. All. The. Way! Read. This. Post!

'Tis the Spring Equinox and a not-so-young blogger's thoughts turn to style. Before he manfiested symptoms of either Ménière's disease or Alzheimer's disease, the Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin — Jonathan Swift — wrote in an essay ("Letter to a Young Gentleman Lately Entered Into Holy Orders", 1721) that "proper words in proper places" were the principal elements of style. Today, a blogger at Salon, Cindy Ross, did Dean Swift proud. Her proper words in proper places indict the latest scourge of our language. This girl be stylin'. If this is (fair & balanced) literacy criticism, so be it.

[x Open Salon]
Who. Originated. This. Horrible. Abuse. Of. Punctuation?
By Cindy Ross

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...and capitalization, too?

I've been wondering about the use of periods between, and capitalization of, each word in a sentence or phrase. It's a fad, and from what I can detect through intrepid journalism, it has been around for several years. Are we no longer able to express through word choice and sentence organization the emphasis we are trying to communicate? It bothers me when writers indulge in it, because it's exactly that, a self-indulgence. I like to think that the level of writing is consistently good here; when I see the taint of pop culture creeping in, I'm disheartened.

I'm discussing it with my daughter as I write. Becca will soon be majoring in Asian languages and English, and I value her opinion. Tragically, she has just pronounced me a purist. Clearly she considers this a devastating insult. When I tell her, triumphantly, that she is absolutely right, she throws up her hands in disgust and leaves the room. Ah ha! She is herself guilty of this abuse, and therefore cannot admit that it is troublesome to those of us who care about the language. I admit it: I do resist linguistic fads. I've avoided smiley faces on principle for ten years now. I especially fight against fads that I suspect have been widely disseminated through television, and I have reason to believe that this Worst. Punctuation. Ever. has originated precisely from the medium I loathe.

Sure enough, when I google (yes, I hate that new verb, too. I suppose I should say, "when I search." Maybe I'm not as extreme a purist as Becca thinks.) Anyway, when I, uh, search, I find evidence that confirms my worst suspicions. According to this post at Language Log, we may have The Simpsons to thank for this example of pop culture punctuation:

When did that "periods and capital letters" thing start anyway? I associate it with TV fan forums, most famously in the expression "Best. Episode. Ever." Or "Worst. Episode. Ever." (That expression, credited to Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons, has been snowcloned into "best/worst X ever," as in VH1's show "Best Week Ever.") Prosodically it seems to imply that each word should be treated as an intonation unit, with appropriate pitch and stress at each onset. On ESPN one hears that sort of intonation from Chris Berman in his annoying NFL recaps: "He! Could! Go! All! The! Way!"

I then intrepidly muckrake the Simpsons episode referenced (by clicking on the link so obligingly left) and find that it was aired in 2001. Horrors! We have been indulging in this vile practice for Eight. Years.

This same language blogger points out that "punctuation" has the same etymology as "punch," as in impact. Interesting; I never would have made that connection. But, ever the combative journalist, I will not, of course take the dictation of a source who may have reason to use me as a megaphone for the latest linguistic talking points.

I intrepidly research "punctuation" via the online etymology dictionary. There, I find a confusing hodgepodge of information, but do figure out that "punctuation" as a word can be traced back to 1539, and originates from the Latin (or L., if you're a linguistics nerd) "punctus." Hah! Now I'm onto something. I refer to the first online Latin-English translator that a Google search turns up, and find this translates to "to penetrate, a prick, sting, little hole, harrass, annoy, harass, a point, to prick, spot, puncture, place, stab, touch, move." The muckraker in me objects to this promiscuous grouping of nouns and verbs, but I am worn out from all this intrepid journalism, so this translation will have to do.

So what do I conclude from this exhaustive, Ph.D.-dissertation-worthy research? Punctuation is our friend. It helps us add punch to what we write. It prompts the reader to "hear" what we've written as if we have spoken it, with the emphases and pauses the way we would have said it to the reader, if we could.

Becca, in the meantime, has concluded her own research. She has reviewed years of journal-writing, and has found an example dating back to 2002 in which she has inserted dashes between individual words for emphasis. She says, "I couldn't possibly have been influenced by the Simpsons episode you mention."

I respond, "You probably weren't. The Simpsons' usage probably 'went viral,' to rely on another pop culture word. This is probably uniquely your attempt to express your own intonation. Can I see it?"

Outraged, she claims executive privilege. I sympathize with anyone who wants to keep a diary entry written at the age of 13 private.

I agree with Becca that language needs to evolve. But I think it's wise to recognize our use of clichés, and even wiser to avoid an overreliance on them.

Of course, journalistic muckraking has its hazards. In googling "periods between words for emphasis," one hit, for some reason, was this link. Is someone trying to tell me something? ♥

[Cindy Ross, according to her own blog-bio, is "...politically cynical, struggling to remain generous in a world of greed. I teach. Never watch TV EVER (Well, okay, Bill Moyers and NOW online.) Give me a book or a Glenn Greenwald post to read, and I'm happy. A self-styled agnostic Lutheran deist, I view Jim Wallis, not James Dobson, as the better example of What Jesus Would Do."]

Copyright © 2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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