Culture of the United States and marching bands, which aim to raise school spirit and entertain the crowd at halftime. Basketball is another major sport, represented professionally by the National Basketball Association. It was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, by Canadian-born physical education teacher James Naismith. College basketball is also popular, due in large part to the NCAA men's Division I basketball tournament in March, also known as "March Madness." Ice hockey is the fourth leading professional team sport. Always a mainstay of Great Lakes and New England-area culture, the sport gained tenuous footholds in regions like the American South since the early 1990s,
YMCA YMCA in Springfield, Mass. in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a clergyman, educator and physician. Naismith was asked to create an indoor "athletic distraction" to keep rowdy youth busy in the cold New England winter months. Luther Gulick, the head of the Springfield Y, gave Naismith two weeks to come up with a game to occupy a particularly incorrigible group. Naismith decided the game had to be physically active, simple to understand and would have minimal physical roughness. The original game was played with a soccer ball and two peach baskets nailed to the balcony of the Springfield Y. The