A rare moment, indeed!

It is worth trying to put into perspective how infrequent is an outright Big Ten basketball championship at UW–Madison.

Prior to last week’s accomplishment, to find such a feat one had to go back to a time when Harry Truman was occupying the White House. That year, 1947, Jackie Robinson joined the Booklyn Dodgers and Capt. Chuck Yeager, USAF, broke the sound barrier in the X-1 rocket-powered research plane. Doris Day, Al Jolson, Frankie Lane and Glenn Miller supplied the hot sounds on the radio and folks headed to the library to pick up the new books by Saul Bellow, Anne Frank, Thomas Mann and Jean-Paul Sartre.

So breathe the rare air and get ready for Friday when the top-seeded Badgers begin Big Ten tournament play in Chicago. The winner automatically receives a bid to the NCAA tournament, which determines the national champions.

Who won it all in 1947? Holy Cross. Another rare accomplishment.