MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Maryland men’s basketball ends its week off Thursday night at Ohio State, having entered the AP Top 25 at No. 18, and then return home on Sunday to host Rutgers at noon, which will mark the Terps’ 14th game on Super Bowl Sunday.
Playing on national television on Super Bowl Sunday is nothing new in College Park. In fact, Maryland had a big hand in starting what is now a tradition of college basketball games leading up to the big football game..
Overall, the Terps are 6-7 on Super Bowl Sunday, with this Sunday’s game marking their first since February 13, 2022 when they fell at Purdue, 62-61.
College basketball on Super Bowl Sunday had largely been an Atlantic Coast Conference thing for most of the previous 52 years, with the Big Ten more recently joining the tailgate. And it all began on Sunday, January 14, 1973 when Maryland, then the No. 2 team in the country, played host to No. 3 North Carolina State at Cole Field House.
College basketball was pretty much a regional sport up to that time, yet this game would help it to become national, because Maryland, NC State and eventual national champion UCLA were the three best teams in the country.
Later that day, the Washington Redskins would play the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VII, which the Dolphins would win by the score of XIV-VII, to become the only undefeated team in NFL history. The NFL was real then, but it, too, was beginning to understand how to fully use television to become the greedy and shady corporation it has become today.
Enter Maryland and NC State and their star players – Tom McMillen, Len Elmore and John Lucas for the Terps, and Tom Burleson, Monte Towe and David Thompson, the greatest player in ACC history, for the Wolfpack – for the first nationally televised college basketball game on Super Bowl Sunday, even though it was not aired on any of the three major networks.
The ACC and the regional C.D. Chesley Network produced the game and lined up 145 stations throughout the country (with help from the Hughes Sports Network), to syndicate the noon game nationally. The original plan was to televise the game nationally the day before on Saturday, but Chesley believed more stations would be available for a Sunday telecast as the country eased itself into its Super Bowl gluttony.
The great Ray Scott and Billy Packer were the announcers for the game, even though Jim Thacker was Packer’s play-by-play partner on the regional ACC broadcasts, with the two of them together remaining huge in the wonderful memories of the old ACC that so many of us still have.
It would mark Packer’s first national broadcasting exposure and it would help him become the lead analyst once college basketball went to the networks a few years later. Thacker was also part of the broadcast as a sideline reporter.
An estimated 25 to 30 million viewers tuned in, far exceeding Chesley’s expectations, for a game that would open the door to a life of heartbreak for Maryland basketball fans, as Thompson scored 37 points, including the game-winner in the final seconds, to produce an 87-85 win for NC State.
Maryland fell behind big midway through the second half, but rallied to take a six-point lead entering the final minutes. But Terps coach Lefty Driesell decided to hold the ball with the lead, as there was no shot clock in college basketball then, and force State to foul.
It was a good plan, except McMillen, Maryland’s best free-throw shooter, missed two front ends and the Wolfpack tied the score.
In the final seconds, Burleson, the 7-foot-4 center, put up a shot that Thompson, he of the 48-inch vertical leap, caught in the air and put in the basket with three seconds left.
State would finish the season undefeated that year, winning the ACC title by beating Maryland, 76-74, in the final. However, the Wolfpack was ineligible for the NCAA tournament because of recruiting violations committed in securing the services of Thompson.
A year later, Chesley did it all over again on Super Bowl Sunday, with the same teams playing with nearly the same result, as NC State beat Maryland, 80-74, in Raleigh. Just a couple of months later, the teams would meet again in the ACC championship game and produce what is still regarded to be the greatest college basketball game ever played.
State won the ACC title game, 103-100, in overtime and would go on to win the national championship.
Maryland? As just 25 teams made the NCAA Tournament then there were no at-large bids, with only conference champions advancing. So the Terps, one of the three best teams in the country, elected not to defend their NIT title of the previous season and were left to wonder what could have been. In fact, the NCAA soon expanded the tournament field with at-large teams because of that Maryland team.
So because of David Thompson, because of Norm Sloan and his loud sports coats (even for the ‘70s) and because of one Charles G. “Lefty” Driesell, the ultimate promoter, innovator and ringmaster under what Billy Hahn once called “the big top of Cole Field House,” college basketball began to explode onto the national landscape.
And for as long as there are Super Bowl Sundays there will never be an NC State fan who won’t wake up on those mornings, think of that January day of 1973 and then smile. Nor will there be a Maryland Terrapins fan who won’t look back on that same historic day of college basketball and find himself saying, “Son of a …”
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT