Mike Sielski: An obituary for Cinderella, the darling of March Madness, now gone for good

PHILADELPHIA — Cinderella, who elevated underdogs, cut down juggernauts, and cultivated drama, surprise, and joy within the NCAA Tournament for more than three quarters of a century, died earlier this week after a long battle with money and modernity. She was 78.

An inspiration for the term "March Madness," now widely recognized as the trademarked name for the 68-team single-elimination event that defines each college basketball season, Ms. Ella had fallen into ill health in recent years. A combination of factors — particularly the emergence of name, image and likeness; pay-for-play; and the transfer portal — had weakened her condition, and experts put the time of death at approximately 9:14 p.m. Sunday, not long after No. 4 seed Maryland beat 12th-seeded Colorado State, 72-71, in the West Regional.

That outcome assured that Ms. Ella’s waning influence on the tournament would be cast in stark relief. All 16 teams in this year’s regional semifinals come from the four football-centric “power conferences,” and there is no team seeded 11th or lower in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2007. Arkansas, No. 10 in the West Regional and coached by the accomplished and pomaded John Calipari, is the only double-digit seed left, but it is hard to make the case that Ms. Ella is playing any role in the Razorbacks’ success. John H. Tyson — the chairman of Tyson Foods — and his family are longtime boosters of the Razorbacks.

At her best, though, Ms. Ella could help a small college or university, a mid-major program, or a mediocre large-conference team overcome the power and financial support of a billionaire chicken tycoon. She shepherded the 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack and the 1985 Villanova Wildcats to national championships, the 2006 George Mason Colonials and the 2018 Loyola-Chicago Ramblers to the Final Four, and the 2022 St. Peter’s Peacocks to the Elite Eight. What’s more, she contributed to dozens of first- and second-round upsets that established and reaffirmed one of the tournament’s most appealing traits: the David-vs.-Goliath dynamic that gave the event its sense of unpredictability.

Ms. Ella never married, but she did engage in several brief but intense relationships with various teams over her life, beginning with a five-day dalliance in March 1947 with the Holy Cross Crusaders. At the time, the NCAA Tournament comprised just eight teams, and Holy Cross was seeded last among them. But the Crusaders won three consecutive games to claim their only national championship, and when Paul N. Johnson, sports editor of the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram and the paper’s Holy Cross beat reporter, called them “the Cinderella kids of college basketball,” a lasting connection formed between Ms. Ella and the tournament.

Her work transformed low-profile coaches and players into stars and legends. Because of North Carolina State’s improbable journey to the ‘83 title, for instance, Jim Valvano, the Wolfpack’s charismatic coach, became a motivational speaker, an analyst for ESPN, and a national icon. To this day, Lorenzo Charles, the unassuming power forward whose last-second dunk won the championship game for N.C. State, is featured in virtually every highlight compilation of the tournament’s most memorable moments.

Charles understood immediately the effect that Ms. Ella would have on his life, even if he couldn’t quite believe it. When he and Cozell McQueen — his teammate, friend and roommate — returned to the team’s hotel that night, Charles was still marveling over his contribution to the Wolfpack’s 54-52 victory over Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler and the “Phi Slama Jama” Houston Cougars.

“We’re in the room, and he’s lying on his bed,” McQueen said in an interview. “He’d just bounce up. ‘Yo, Co. I just made the final shot for the N-C-Double-A Championship. Yo! Yo! Co, that’s heard around the world.’ If we didn’t see it, we wouldn’t have believed it, man.”

Ms. Ella’s efforts led to many of the most moving scenes in tournament history. Those episodes included Princeton coach Pete Carril’s burst of emotion after his 13th-seeded Tigers upset defending national champion UCLA in 1996 and 11th-seeded Loyola Marymount’s run to the Elite Eight in 1990 following Hank Gathers’ sudden and tragic death from a heart condition. (Lions star Bo Kimble, who had grown up and played high school ball with Gathers at Dobbins Tech, shot his first free throw every game left-handed as a tribute to his friend. He made all of them.)

She then went on to assist in the establishing of several tournament milestones. In 2011, the VCU Rams became the first team to go from the First Four to the Final Four. In 2013, the Florida Gulf Coast Eagles became the first No. 15 seed to reach the Sweet 16. And in 2023, the Florida Atlantic University Owls became what might turn out to be the last mid-major to reach the Final Four.

Even the 2003-04 St. Joseph’s Hawks, who went unbeaten during their regular season, entered that year’s tournament as a No. 1 seed, and advanced to the Elite Eight, enjoyed the benefits of Ms. Ella’s magic. The fact that the Hawks lost to Oklahoma State in the 2004 East Regional Final, that they fell short of the Final Four, is not held against them. And Ms. Ella’s absence will only make it more difficult, if not impossible, for a similar story — a tiny Jesuit school, without a football program, producing one of the best college basketball teams in America — to materialize again.

“We’re now boiled down to judging a season on whether you win four games to go to the Final Four? It’s become jaded in that way,” former St. Joe’s coach Phil Martelli once said in an interview. “I just hope that the guys who played on that team appreciate how special they were and how special what they did for each other, for me, for the program, and for the school was.”

Ms. Ella does leave behind a more complicated legacy than those who championed her might want to acknowledge. During and immediately following UCLA’s dynasty of the mid-1960s and ‘70s, college basketball routinely drew better television ratings than the NBA, and viewership for the tournament — according to TNT and CBS, the networks televising it — is higher this year than it has been since 1993. That evidence suggests that Ms. Ella’s positive influence on the tournament’s popularity has been overstated to a degree, that the public prefers watching the best-known and biggest programs compete for supremacy in the sport, and that Ms. Ella already had done enough to raise the tournament to its lofty place in American popular culture.

“It was not a vintage first weekend,” The Athletic’s Joe Rexrode wrote Monday, “yet it was nonstop fun, the mark of an untouchable sporting event.”

Ms. Ella is survived by the memories of college basketball fans around the country. Funeral arrangements will be announced in the coming weeks, once the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC determine them.