I was eight years old on March 23, 1957, and the game of basketball had not yet replaced cowboys and indians or army as my favorite thing to do.

I didn’t have a goal on the driveway. Heck, we didn’t have a driveway, at least not one suitable for hoops. Anything landing in the driveway rolled straight down hill into a busy street. Not conducive to good hoops.

But we did have a black and white TV that brought in, although fuzzy at times, the three channels everyone got back then – ABC, CBS and NBC. If the stars, moons, clouds and the tin foil on the rabbit ears aligned just right, we could also get the public TV station out of Chapel Hill, N.C.

The TV was in the living room, close to oil circulator heater. In the winter, I could lay on the floor, catch the latest episode of Superman and stay warm.

But on that March night, there was a basketball game being played. To be honest, I donąt remember much about it. I do remember a couple of my older brothers, both North Carolina Tar Heel fans, being worried about some guy named Chamberlain.

And I knew the game must have been important, because it was on TV.

Basketball was never on TV, not on Saturday night. And my daddy was upset because some basketball game was getting in the way of Gunsmoke and Miss Kitty.

Then the next day, a cool, cloudy Sunday, I knew what had happened the night before was a really big deal, because the local TV station was showing the Tar Heels getting off the plane in Raleigh with hundreds of fans there to greet them.

Some guy was talking about a national championship and one of my brothers watched it like it was the Second Coming. Of course, I later figured out he thought Frank McGuire walked on water, so maybe for my brother it was the Second Coming.

It would be years later, after jump shots and dribbles replaced Matt Dillon and Paladin, that I really understood the importance of that game. Makes me wish I’d paid more attention.

North Carolina 54, Kansas 53. Triple overtime.

All that came back to me recently when I watched – on television – as the 1957 and 1982 Tar Heel teams that won NCAA titles were honored at halftime of the North Carolina-Wake Forest game.

I’ve come to know those ’57 Tar Heels by what I’ve read in books and media guides and what I’ve seen on grainy film. Like all of us, they’ve aged considerably, but you can still put the names of Rosenbluth and Kearns and Quigg with their faces.

If you grew up in North Carolina like I did, you knew the names, even if your blood ran Duke blue or State red or Wake Forest gold.

Everett Case, while he might have started it all when he came to N.C. State from Indiana and brought with him winning and the tradition of cutting down the nets, it was that ’57 team that really put basketball on the map in the Tar Heel State.

And it’s probably the reason basketball has become so prevalent on our TVs.

No more fiddling with the antenna, adding another piece of tin foil or asking your little brother to hold the rabbit ears and stand by the TV. Just click the remote, particularly on the weekend, and you have hoops du jour.

That might not be the best thing. Fewer games on TV might be better. But it sure beats the alternative of having to try to find a game on the AM radio which late into my teenage years was still the most available way to find a game.

In December of 1965, UCLA, ranked No. 1, made an unprecedented trip to North Carolina to play Duke. I was a Duke fan back then, loved Art Heyman and Jeff Mullins. The Blue Devils and Bruins played games in Charlotte on Friday and Durham on Saturday. The Blue Devils won both and neither game was on TV.

With the AM broadcast fading in and out and me trying to twist that knob ever so gently to keep the signal streaming into my bedroom, I could still hear the gravely voice of Ray Reeve saying, “school is out, the Blue Devils will win here tonight.”

But even by ’65, because of what happened on that March night in ’57, we at least had the ACC game of the week, making many of those cold Saturday afternoons bearable, with Heyman and Mullins and Cunningham and the Mahaffeys and all the others coming right into our living rooms.

In 1957, college basketball was growing in North Carolina, but having the Tar Heels’ triple overtime wins over Michigan State and Kansas piped back home by a guy named C.D. Chesley was like dumping Miracle Gro on the tomato plants. We’re still reaping the harvest.

Chesley was a visionary who believed college basketball was a game the masses would embrace on TV. While coaches and administrators feared it would kill attendance, it had the opposite effect.

From that ’57 game, Chesley brought us the ACC Game of the Week brought to you by Pilot Life Insurance Company. I can still sing the jingle...

“Sail with the Pilot all the way, so get on board Pilot ship Today.”

Chesley turned the ACC on TV into a gold mine, and as a result other conferences followed. The ACC Tournament became a must-watch event. Other conferences laughed at it then copied it. The NCAA Tournament, with a little help from Magic and Bird in 1979, became a billion-dollar affair watched by millions.

Now, I drive my wife nuts with the remote control, skipping back and forth between games, taking it for granted that there will be two or three on every night.

Some might say I put too much importance on that ’57 game, but I donąt think so, because I know where it led me.

I still remember lying on the floor (we’d moved by then) and watching Heyman put 40 on the Tar Heels in his final home game. Watching the tournament. Watching the Game of the Week and wishing they had Game of the Night.

The TV was still black and white, but we had this fancy antenna attached the side of the house. I’d get sent outside to twist the pole that held the antenna. My brother or my daddy would tap on the window to let me know when to stop turning.

The picture had to be clear.

And when I watched those men, now old and gray and over weight get their reception in Chapel Hill last week, I finally understood just how clear the picture is now.

No game in the history of college basketball, at least in North Carolina, was more important than that one in March of ’57.