The origins of the March Madness bracket pool are surrounded by competing stories, with one account tracing it back to a Staten Island pub and another to a U.S. Postal Service worker in Kentucky. Both claim to have created what has since become a nationwide tradition every March. According to a report from ABC7 New York, Jody's Club Forest, a bar in West Brighton, asserts that its March Madness pool, which started in the late '70s with an entry fee of just $10 and a first jackpot of $880, eventually grew to a staggering $1.6 million payout by the time it was shut down in 2006.
Meanwhile, KSL reports that in Kentucky, boasting a rich tradition of basketball and betting, the family of the late Bob Stinson, a U.S. Postal Service worker, maintains that he was crafting brackets back in the 1970s too and that his more traditional method of picking every game down to the champion originated the bracket concept. Stinson's son, Damon, told KSL that his father believed "100%" that he had created the first pool, traveling the country and spreading his brackets, and through the nascent tech of Excel and email, his pool eventually expanded.
Back in Staten Island, the owner of Jody's Club Forest, Terence Haggerty, reflected on the bar's past, "We created a pool that just blew up over time," he told ABC7 New York, reminiscing how the concept took hold and turned his family's business into a March destination. The pub, now a tribute to Haggerty's parents, no longer celebrates its controversial pool history, with no memorabilia commemorating the venture which ultimately led to his father pleading guilty to tax-evasion charges related to the underreporting of income, a consequence that weighed heavily on the family.
As for documentation, evidence of these early bracket pools remains anecdotal and scarce, the truth muddied by time and the lack of concrete proof, making the debate of who truly originated the March Madness pool seem as futile as, well, getting through the NCAA Tournament without a single upset; a sentiment echoed by Haggerty as he reasoned, "If somebody said, 'No, it's mine,' go right ahead," when discussing the matter of the first March Madness pool with ABC7 New York.
