I cant believe that basketball was so popular amongst the old generation in a white midwest farming town. Wouldnt baseball and especially football be more popular? How were these sports viewed compared to basketball back then? Im sure you would have never have seen a small Texan town that would follow basketball like this.
shareI belive basketball was a little more popular because it was a winter sport, and for farming towns their was for the most part nothing to do. In the spring crops are planted and in the fall they are harvested.
My dad who grew up on a farm, played football and baseball, in high school during the 1950s which are short season, compared to a winter sport which was a longer season.
one thing you might not have taken into consideration: there is ABSOLUTELY nothing else besides sports in those tiny towns. It probably boils down to this: sit in the house and do nothing and have no social life or get excited about sports and go to all the games and be into it.
just a thought
Obviously basketball wouldn't be that popular in texas because they eat sleep and breathe football. Friday night lights and such.
However Indiana is known as the hotbed of basketball and yes the level of popularity is very accurate as it would of been more popular than the other sports.
In the old days you supported your home town high school in sports. It didn't really matter what sport it was you went out and supported the young people of the town.
shareI don't know about Indiana, but in Missouri, most schools that size weren't even playing football in the 1950s. And baseball, while it would likely draw a decent crowd in April & May, just isn't as exciting on a high school level unless you have really top-notch playersa. (A point guard who can't get the ball downcourt may still lead to some exciting fastbreaks (by the other team) and maybe even a dunk or two (today, anyway), whereas a pitcher who can't get the ball over the plate just leads to the stoppage of time due to boredom.)
The posts about the farming cycle is certainly accurate, too.
I can only venture to guess that the OP is from neither Indiana nor a small town.
shareYou are right about that. Not even from US, but from Sydney. But all the posts have answered my question as I would not know a thing about 50's small town midwest America. Watching a lot of NBA on TV here, its certainly a rare sight to see a white man over 50 in the crowds...except for Jack Nicholson of course :)
shareSmall-town Midwest America in the mid-20th century could get pretty boring during the late fall and winter, between harvest and spring planting.
Towns as small as Hickory didn't have their own movie theaters or libraries (in the movie it is mentioned the nearest ones are in Deer Lick). Cars were also much less common, not every family had a car, so if it was a 20-mile drive to the nearest movie theater, it might as well have been 200 miles. In addition, TV hadn't been invented yet, so from late October to early March, there generally wasn't a lot to do.
So, getting involved in the local high school basketball team gave the people in the barber shops and diners something to talk about.
Plus the local town rivalries with other towns (apparently Terhune was Hickory's big rival) were very big deals in those days. If Hickory High could beat Terhune in the big sectional tournament game, people would be talking about it until the next season.
"TV hadn't been invented yet"
By 1951, television broadcasting had been going on in the U.S. for several years, and millions of people had tv sets. However, a small town like the one in the movie might have been too far from a large urban center to receive a quality signal, so tv watching might not have caught on there yet. In 1960, I lived in Fresno, California, which had a population of 134,000 at that time. In spite of it being one of the 100 largest cities in the country, there was still only one tv station that could be watched, and it only broadcast in the evenings. A lot of people didn't bother having tvs.
I can understand your demographic confusion. But this Is Indiana basketball...everything else came in a distant second
shareIf you're going by the NBA, you are largely right. Pro basketball was popular in the 1950s but nowhere near as big as it was after the 1970s and the rise of superstar players--Chamberlain, Irvin, Jabbar .
At the high school level, it was a much different thing. Your high school team was *your* team--these were guys you ate lunch with, maybe shared a class or two. This was also your town or neighborhood's team, and the 1950s were the last great glimmerings of this now-faded part of American life--being from a small town.
I have not seen the film in question, but reading these posts has sparked my curiosity.
If you enjoyed high school basketball and small-town life, I think you would like this movie. If you do see it, please post again to this board and tell us what you thought of it.
shareIt's Indiana.
Football is a sport.
Basketball is a religion.
Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate.