ABSTRACT
Each year between October and March, the entire state of Indiana submits to an affliction known as “Hoosier Hysteria.” Case in point #1: Sports Illustrated documented the start of the Indiana basketball season at Warren Central High at one second past midnight on Monday, October 8, 1984–a start calculated to “get a jump on the rest of the state.” Case in point #2: In 1984, California–the most populous state and one of the game's hotbeds–drew almost 200,000 to its Division I, II, and III playoffs. Indiana, with eighteen million less people and one-third the number of high schools, had well over one million spectators for its state tournament (which, until recently, was not divided into divisions based on schools’ sizes). As noted by Bruce Newman,
That's Hoosier Hysteria–love and death and lunacy, one of America's goofiest tribal rites. “This isn’t a game in Indiana, it's a religion,” declares Howard Sharpe, who has coached in the state for 45 years. “There was a year once when nobody was buried in Indiana for a week. Big snowstorm paralyzed everything … And there were 250 high school basketball games played in the state that week. They just put the people on snowplows and brought ‘em to the gymns.”
