This is 40th anniversary of most momentous Final Four in history

When the 61,612 lucky souls filed out of the New Orleans Superdome the night of March 29, 1982, there was no way they could have understood the magnitude of what they had just witnessed.

Yes, the largest crowd to ever watch a basketball game in person at the time saw an epic duel starring two great coaching friends who later would be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. It had seen a terrifically played, free-flowing game decided by a jump shot from a not-yet-a-household-name freshman in an era dominated by upperclassmen. Undoubtedly, North Carolina’s 63-62 victory over Georgetown was, in the parlance of today, an instant classic.

But only with the benefit of time – 40 years now – can we truly appreciate what occurred that weekend (and the sport is returning to the Superdome for this year’s Final Four). CBS Sports’ first Final Four was more than memorable. It served as the ignition point for so much of what the game has experienced in the four decades since. The trend of large football domes successfully hosting Final Fours can be traced to 1982. Georgetown, which itself became a national brand that transcended sport, became the first team from the nascent Big East Conference to reach the Final Four, accelerating the growth of a league that soon would dominate the decade and beyond. Michael Jordan’s legend was born, his game-winning 16-footer ushering in a drama-rich, four-year era widely considered the sport’s golden age. And Georgetown’s John Thompson became the first Black coach to reach the Final Four, paving a path for others to follow. 

The 1982 event set the stage for the sport’s modern era, cementing its place on the Mount Rushmore of Final Fours. 

“Most definitely, given the actors, the iconic finish,” Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball, told On3. “It certainly catapulted the Final Four to greater heights in the years that followed. A pretty substantial year historically.”

Ask Billy Packer, the former CBS color commentator who covered every national title game from 1975-2008, about the impact of the 1982 event and he will unleash a 13-minute answer, barely pausing for a breath. Mike Aresco, the AAC commissioner who had long stints on the TV side with ESPN and CBS, called it “enormously significant.” 

“That was the glory period,” Mike Tranghese, the former longtime Big East commissioner, told On3.

“That was the start,” former Turner Sports president David Levy told On3, “of what made March Madness March Madness.”

Ushering in the Final Four’s dome era

As the CBS broadcast began the night of the title game, more than 17 million TV viewers heard host Brent Musburger say that the game would be played inside a venue that stood 27 stories tall and stretched out over 13 acres of real estate. Playing in such a cavernous football dome was a novelty. In the game’s leadup, ”everybody was complaining,” Packer recalls now. “Nobody really knew what to expect.”

There had been one previous Final Four played in a dome, the 1971 event in Houston’s Astrodome. It was widely panned because few seats surrounded the court and there were too many poor sightlines. Even though New Orleans won the 1982 bid in 1978, concerns remained, from both a playing and fan-viewership perspective.

Some upper-deck seats were designated as distant-viewing tickets. Writers even called them “high-altitude seats.” Early in the final, Gary Bender, CBS’ play-by-play announcer, told viewers that fans had the pleasure of watching the game on “beautiful TV screens” some 80-feet above the court. But this was not the mega-video screen of today – see SoFi Stadium – and many fans in the upper deck grabbed binoculars just to watch on the video screen. Some tickets were even published with the distance from the seat to the court on them. 

Then-Arkansas coach Eddie Sutton said at the time that he was disappointed with the environment, which he thought was devoid of “electricity.” Then-Long Beach State coach Tex Winter opined that fans of the future would watch the video screen from the upper deck (tickets were $18 in 1982) while listening to the game with headphones. And then-Michigan State coach Jud Heathcote told reporters that the Final Four should be played exclusively in basketball facilities. But when he pondered the additional revenue from more than doubling the record for national title game attendance, Heathcote acknowledged the obvious: “We have perhaps created a financial monster.”

After 1982, the Final Four returned to football-sized venues periodically – and returned to New Orleans in 1987 and ’93 – before moving exclusively to large venues starting in 1997. By that point, there was enough of a proof of concept that it would work operationally. And given the upward trajectory of sport and the ticket demand from fan bases, coaches and corporate sponsors, it needed to work. It was time.

“Knowing how we manage the huge allocations of tickets and the demand we have now, all these years later,” Gavitt said, “it probably got to somewhat of a breaking point in the mid-’90s. … It only made sense to take it to a larger venue where you can accommodate all those requests and then, obviously, realize the revenue that would be associated with a larger venue.”

Starting in 2009, the court was moved to the middle of the dome and raised some 3 feet to create better sight lines. Nowadays, there is a 60,000-seat minimum seating capacity for Final Four venues. Gavitt said that many players remark how unique of an experience it is playing before 70,000 fans, something players won’t encounter again.

Traditionalists – Tranghese and Aresco among them – acknowledge the vast revenue potential associated with larger venues, but believe the element of intimacy is lost. In 2009, Tranghese recalls walking out to the court at Ford Field in Detroit saying to himself, “I can’t believe we’re playing basketball in this kind of venue.” Since retiring as Big East commissioner in the spring of 2009, Tranghese said he has not returned to the Final Four. He has no desire to watch it in a massive venue.

Aresco swears that, when sitting courtside in domes, he could feel slight wind currents. But he acknowledges that the event has matured from its quaint roots and now is a five-day event, complete with a popular fan festival, a highly publicized concert and a variety of ancillary attractions. “A CBS colleague said to me, ‘You used to come for the basketball. Now you come for the music, ’ ” Aresco said.

The arrival of the Big East

In the game’s opening minutes, Georgetown freshman Patrick Ewing blocked one shot after another. He was called for goaltending five times in the game’s first few minutes. It was a strategic move by Thompson to have Ewing block everything in sight – whether it was basket interference or not – to rattle the egos of the Tar Heels.

It also sent a message to the nation: The in-your-face, physical style of Big East basketball and a culturally significant Georgetown brand had formally arrived.

When the Hoyas reached the Final Four in 1982, the Big East, largely a collection of small Catholic universities in the Northeast, was in just its third season. By Georgetown breaking through, visionary Dave Gavitt’s league wasn’t just ahead of schedule. “It was way ahead of schedule,” said Tranghese, who was Gavitt’s right-hand man at the time. “Everything happened so fast, it was mind-boggling to me at the time.”

Propelled by the national exposure afforded by another entity founded in 1979, ESPN, recruits on the West Coast could come home from high school and watch an emerging league chock full of talented players and coaches with oversized personalities. The Hoyas reaching the ’82 Final Four cemented the league as nationally relevant.

Georgetown played in three national title games in a four-year span, winning the championship in 1984. Within a year, the league took its conference tournament to Madison Square Garden, where it became an institution. And three years later, the league had three teams – Georgetown, St. John’s and eventual champion Villanova – reach the 1985 Final Four.

In the pregame show, Musburger called Georgetown an unknown contender for much of the season for everyone except “aficionados.” That was the year, and the event, that changed that narrative, setting the league on a vertical trajectory that, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said, no one other than Dave Gavitt could have envisioned. In the years that followed, it became a haven for national title contenders and, in the words of former Georgetown standout Jerome Williams, “must-see TV for NBA scouts.”

“Dave Gavitt dragged me and the rest of us into this league,” Boeheim told me in his office on the afternoon much of the original Big East broke up almost a decade ago. “The reason I got inducted into the Hall of Fame was Dave Gavitt. The reason John Thompson got inducted was Dave Gavitt. … The Big East gave us a platform to recruit, to get on television, to win more games. … It made my life. It made my career.”

To that point, Dan Gavitt, the son of the late Dave Gavitt, said Georgetown reaching the Final Four broke the proverbial glass ceiling, enabling Big East programs to dream and realize they could reach that rarefied air. Later in the decade, unlikely Big East teams such as Providence in 1987 and Seton Hall in 1989 also reached the Final Four. 

“I don’t think programs like that could have imagined, ‘Hey, we can compete for a national championship’ before Georgetown did it,” Dan Gavitt said. “Now you’re competing against them in conference play, and it’s like, ‘OK, if we can compete with those guys, we can compete with anybody – North Carolina, UCLA.’ And that really did happen, ultimately, but it took a leader, an Alpha Dog to make that happen. And Georgetown was certainly that.”

When Michael Jordan became Michael Jordan

With North Carolina trailing by one with 32 seconds remaining, Thompson was sure Tar Heels coach Dean Smith would get the ball in the hands of star James Worthy. Much of the viewing audience undoubtedly felt the same way. Did anyone think the ball would find the freshman from Wilmington, N.C., who still was writing letters home to his parents?

“Did anyone know how good Michael Jordan really was?” Tranghese said. “I don’t think so.”

He was overshadowed by stars galore. The Final Four also included Louisville, the 1980 national champion, and Houston, who featured Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. In the title game, Ewing was a headliner, as were two more seasoned stars on North Carolina, Worthy and Sam Perkins. While Jordan set a scoring record in the McDonald’s High School All-American game a year earlier, in the fall of 1981 he didn’t even make the Sports Illustrated cover photo of four Tar Heels and Smith. How many times was Jordan mentioned in CBS’ pregame show? Zero.

Thompson wrote in his autobiography, “I Came as a Shadow,” that he believed Smith would get the ball to Worthy probably in the high post. Worthy did come up to the elbow, but the ball was skipped across court to Jordan on the left wing. With no hesitation, he shot it. It swished, with 16 seconds to play.

No one had a better view of Jordan’s shot falling through the nylon than Bobby Dibler, one of the game’s three officials who was standing under the basket when Jordan released the iconic shot.

“That,” Dibler told On3, “was the beginning of Michael Jordan.”

Thompson always believed Jordan shot the ball as if he were expecting to get it. And after the game on the court, when Packer asked Jordan if it was in fact a set play for him, he said, “Yes, sir. It was a set play.” Through the years, Thompson wrote, Jordan would tease the coach, saying, “I got that shot because y’all were guarding Worthy.” Thompson would reply, “You got that right [expletive]. Worthy was a number one draft pick, and you were just a skinny freshman.”

Not for long. One year later, Jordan won national player of the year honors. And just two years later, just before coach Bob Knight took the U.S. Olympic team of college stars to Los Angeles in 1984, Packer recalls Knight telling him, “Let me tell you something about Jordan. He will be the greatest [expletive] player that ever played.”

Jordan’s shot is seared in the memories of all who saw it live or on TV. It is one of the earliest singular NCAA tournament moments preserved in history; the 1979 final matching Magic Johnson and Larry Bird was historic but lacked a critical play. 

Five years later, to punctuate the 1987 Final Four, CBS would unveil its “One Shining Moment” video montage, a now-annual tradition. Jordan would go on to author a few more shining moments in his time, but credit him for one of the first game-winning championship moments whose significance lives on. 

“Because of the stage, because of how many people watched in person and on television, and because of who shot the ball,” Gavitt said, “it definitely did build this ‘One Shining Moment’ in March Madness brand that we all treasure today.”

John Thompson on the public stage

After Jordan’s shot, Georgetown still had a chance to win in the waning, frenzied moments. After dribbling past halfcourt, Hoyas point guard Fred Brown started to pass to teammate Eric Smith. Worthy jumped out to make a potential steal, so Brown held onto the ball. Worthy was then out of position and a few seconds later, Brown, in the heat of the moment, threw the ball directly to Worthy, essentially sealing Carolina’s victory and Smith’s first of two national championships. 

As the official in the trail position, Dibler was near Worthy. When Worthy caught the errant pass, Dibler said he and Worthy briefly locked eyes. “He may have been as surprised as I was with the ball going right to him,” Dibler recalled.

The first thing Thompson did after the game was embrace Brown, who was in his lowest moment. The poignant image has long stood in sharp contrast with the public perception of Thompson. 

Thompson and his Georgetown program were college basketball’s ultimate Rorschach test. Some perceived Thompson to be a coach who viewed the world through the prism of race, who was combative with the media, and too restrictive with access to his players. Others saw a largely Black team that thrived despite overt racism. In 1983, Thompson pulled his team from the court at his alma mater, Providence, after a fan held up a sign that said, “Ewing can’t read.” At another game, a banana peel was thrown on the court. Racism, subtle and overt, was rampant. 

The Hoyas adopted a defiant persona, one that particularly resonated in the Black community starting in the mid-1980s. Rap artists like Chuck D donned Georgetown apparel. The popular 1991 film Boyz n the Hood featured leading character Tre Styles wearing a Georgetown T-shirt while taking the SAT. The Hoyas’ brand was larger than life. 

Williams, the former Georgetown standout who teamed with Allen Iverson in the mid-1990s, said the Georgetown brand, at its core, was an us-against-the-world mentality. 

“Let’s go out [on the court] and kill everybody,” Williams told On3. “We had that attitude – us against the world. It’s how a lot of African-Americans feel. From the street level, that’s where Coach Thompson really represented the brand of the African-American community really not taking anything from anybody. Unapologetic. ‘We’re here to make a statement.’ That brand, every time they stepped on the floor, that’s what you saw.” 

Thompson, who claimed he knew two languages, English and profanity, was fiercely protective of his players. Tranghese said Thompson always used to tell Dave Gavitt, “I’ll tell my kids they’re assholes, but nobody on the outside is ever telling one of my kids they are an asshole.”

“We live in unfortunately a bigoted society still,” Tranghese said. “And people just thought John was what they call a reverse racist, which was so far from the truth of who John was. I’d always jump back at people and tell them to get out of my face about that stuff. … I don’t know that the entirety of America still understands how important John was.”

Thompson stands as one of the most consequential coaching figures in the sport’s history. He was way ahead of his time in articulating the hypocrisy of the amateur model and voicing opposition to NCAA policies that disproportionately impacted Black athletes. When he won the title in 1984, he said he was insulted that he was asked what it meant to be the first Black coach to win the title. In his book, he explained that he was the first Black coach to win one because he was the first afforded the opportunity to do so, crediting predecessors like Clarence “Big House” Gaines, John McLendon and Cal Irvin.

Packer said Thompson’s answer was one of the most astute responses he’s ever heard. He used to tell Thompson he should get out of coaching, run for mayor of Washington, D.C., then become President of the United States. “I really felt he had the opportunity to be that kind of person because he was so deep, so brilliant in the way he operated,” Packer said.

Thompson served as a mentor for countless up-and-coming coaches, Providence’s Ed Cooley among them. And since he won in 1984, three other Black coaches have won national titles: Arkansas’ Nolan Richardson in 1994, Kentucky’s Tubby Smith in 1998 and UConn’s Kevin Ollie in 2014.

A truly special basketball game

The epic 1982 national title game was the start, the beginning of so many threads that would shape the sport. In the years since, Aresco said Dave Gavitt would tell him, “Watching that game, you just didn’t want it to end.” Williams said that when Thompson referenced 1982 with Georgetown players in the mid-1990s, he most often touched on the fact that, if he had to lose, he was glad it was against Smith, a man he deeply respected. 

The more time passes, the greater significance the 1982 event takes on. Packer lists the final as one of the three most consequential games that ushered in the modern era, along with the 1968 Houston-UCLA regular-season game at the Astrodome and the 1974 triple-overtime ACC championship between Maryland and North Carolina State. Tom McMillen, the former U.S. Congressman and Terps All-American who played in that 1974 game, called the 1982 final “a seminal game.”

Through the veteran eyes of Dibler, who also officiated a 1981 national semifinal and the classic 1985 Georgetown-Villanova final, the 1982 title game stands as the best he’s ever been a part of. 

Forty years later, talking to a reporter on his cell from his car in El Paso, he recalls that following the game, he and fellow referees Hank Nichols and John Dabrow made their way into the officials’ locker room and told one another how special that game was, how special it felt even during the action. 

“We felt really good, high-fiving each other, feeling like we had really done a pretty good job refereeing that game,” Dibler said. “We were able to reflect that it was special; we had no idea how special.

“We did not know the magnitude of how special it was going to be to college basketball as we went forward.”