Hungry for Victory

With only 3 1/2 minutes left to play, Indiana was leading Iowa in basketball recently by a runaway score of 92-41, but the Indiana fans were hungry for victory -- ravenous, in fact. When Iowa raised its total to 46 points with 30 seconds to go, the Indiana fans began chanting, "Hamburgers and fries! Hamburgers and fries!" The baffled Iowa players got three more points while stomachs knotted in the stands. Seven seconds to go. Iowa missed a shot and then another at the buzzer to make the final score 102-49.

Cheers exploded throughout the arena in Bloomington, Ind., as though the home-town team, ranked first in the country, had just won the national championship. Then nearly a third of the 17,528 spectators headed for the city's two McDonald's hamburger emporiums, which got no break that day.

As a shrewd commercial ploy, McDonald's had agreed to give every ticket-stub holder a hamburger, an order of French fries and a Coke if Indiana held any opponent to fewer than 50 points during a basketball game in Bloomington. In the three hours after the contest, the two McDonald's served up 5,760 free meals.

When the burger blitz was over, John Bowers, supervisor of the two restaurants, maintained that he would keep on feeding the fans if Indiana kept on holding down the scores. "How often can you be in the same town with the best team in the nation?" he asked. "If they win it all, we're going to do some thing really special." Just what, Bowers had not yet decided. Would you believe a Big Mac, an order of fries and a chocolate shake?

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