[ad_1]
Sign up here to get Beyond the Back Page delivered to your inbox each weekday morning.
Before Selection Sunday was nationally televised; before you were bombarded with ads every five minutes on TV and the radio and repeatedly on every website; before the NCAA Tournament was generating upwards of a billion dollars for the NCAA, and before every office offered brackets like after-dinner mints, there was Jody’s Club Forest.
And there were Jody and Mary Haggerty, the foreparents of the March Madness betting pool.
This sports gambling holiday that began again yesterday owes a debt — although maybe that isn’t the perfect word — to its originators, who helped turn a hobby into a national pastime.
[ad_2]