As with so many things that have happened at the confluence of sports and popular culture across the last 40 years, we can offer credit — or assign blame — to those oh-so-chipper basketball fans who inhabit the residence halls and fraternity houses at Duke University for coming up with the idea.
It seems that on the evening of Monday, March 27, 1978, moments after Kentucky had won the NCAA basketball championship by holding off the upstart Dookies of Jim Spanarkel and Mike Gminski, 94-88, in St. Louis, an impromptu consolation party broke out back home on the Duke campus.