The most unpredictable event in sports has one of the most predictable endings. Whatever happens on Monday night in the NCAA championship, the winning team will congregate around a basket and collectively cut down the net to celebrate its title.
No matter if it's Butler, Connecticut, Kentucky or VCU, players and coaches will climb a ladder and use special scissors to bring down the nets, which will later be displayed in a trophy case or an office somewhere on campus. It's every bit the tradition of the Gatorade dump in the Super Bowl or the celebratory pile-up after the World Series.
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But why? How did it get started? Who was the first to cut them down? And why the nets?
The custom dates back to the 1920s when teams in the famed Indiana boy's high school basketball tournament would celebrate winning the state title by cutting down the nets as souvenirs. In the first 25 years of the tournament, no team cut down the nets in Indianapolis as much as Everett Case's Frankfort teams, which won four state titles between 1925 and 1939.
When World War II began, Case enlisted in the Navy, where he assumed the role of athletic director at various pre-flight schools. After the war ended in 1945, Case took over coaching duties at N.C. State. His Wolfpack won the Southern Conference title and, hearkening back to his days in the Hoosier State, Case and his team cut down the net in celebration.
"He wanted it to show as a sign of winning the championship," Frank Weedon, N.C. State senior associate athletics director emeritus, told USA Today in 2005.
Unlike today, when ladders are brought out by tournament organizers immediately after the buzzer sounds and the scissors are specially made for the occasion and emblazoned with the NCAA logo by a paid sponsor, the process back then was a more informal and organic affair. There were no ladders; players had to hoist each other to the rims. And usually it was a pair of scissors snatched from the scorer's table that assisted in the deed.
Case cut down the nets with N.C. State a number of times, first in the Southern Conference, then in the newly formed Atlantic Coast Conference. (Another tradition Case brought from Indiana was the postseason tournament. He was instrumental in the creation of the ACC tournament, the first, and still the most important, conference tourney.) But it was a net-cutting that occurred when he was finished coaching that may have been the most meaningful.
In 1964, Case was diagnosed with melanoma and had to retire two games into the season. He would live just 18 more months. Before he passed away, Case, confined to a wheelchair, watched his former team upset top-seeded Duke in the finals of the ACC tournament. After the game, a few players went over to press row, hoisted Case upon their shoulders and slowly walked him over to the basket where he cut down a net for the final time.
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