Muhammad Ali molded out of Clay, ACC crowned its first champ, and Happy Birthday Shaq! - This DiSH for March 6

It's March 6th and on this day Cassius Clay ceased to exist, the ACC crowned its first

basketball champion, and Shaq celebrated his birthday in a very emphatic way.

Those stories plus a few more and a non-sports fun fact at the end about Napoleon and why you

should give a little thanks to the little corporal. I'll get started right after this.

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On this day in 1964, Cassius Clay announced he was now Muhammad Ali. A week earlier,

Ali had shaken up the world by beating the world champion Sunny Liston in Miami to claim

the heavyweight title. By that point, the 22-year-old Clay had already converted to Islam,

but had kept it a secret. His win over Liston put in motion his becoming Muhammad Ali.

On March 1st, he went to New York and he met with Malcolm X. By then, Malcolm had been

ostracized from the Nation of Islam, and he was an adversary of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of

the Nation of Islam. Malcolm saw the 22-year-old boxer as a way to begin his own movement,

and he convinced Cassius to give up his last name. He announced on the first that he would now be

called Cassius X. Elijah Muhammad was not a fan of sports. He condemned it as frivolous entertainment.

But the win over Liston thrust the young boxer into a place where Elijah Muhammad saw him now

as an asset. He ordered the editor of the paper, Muhammad Speaks, to add several pages dedicated

to Boxing's new champion. So it became a power play between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad.

On March 5th, Muhammad said the name Cassius had no divine meaning,

and that the boxer should now be known as Muhammad Ali. When Cassius announced to the world

on this day in 1964 that he was now to be known as Muhammad Ali, it further marginalized Malcolm X.

He explained his reasoning for becoming Muhammad Ali, and this NBC News interview a few years later.

No, Clay was not my name. One speak, follow the belief, hear the understand the teachings of the

Arab or Elijah Muhammad, and come into knowledge of ourselves, then we want to be called after names

of our people, which are names that fit us black people, and Clay was a white man's name,

it was a slave name, and I no longer Clay, I'm no longer a slave, so now Muhammad Ali.

On this same day in 1967, the US Selective Service ordered Ali to report to the US Army.

That was an order he would ignore, which would lead to his arrest and conviction of a felony

punishable by up to five years in prison. He was never imprisoned, though, while the case was

under appeal, and his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1971.

The Southern Conference Basketball Tournament tips off today,

rekindling a tradition that had started back in 1921. It is the original and the oldest conference

basketball tournament. The Southern Conference is also known for spawning the southeastern

conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference, and it was on this day in 1954 that the ACC borrowed

post-season basketball tournament concept and made it their own. The Atlantic Coast Conference

had formed in the spring of 1953, after seven universities seceded from the Southern Conference

to form a new league, mostly because they had plans to play big-time football.

The South had been a more popular football region than basketball by far, but it wasn't until

every case was brought from Indiana in 1946 and then injected the South with a new brand of

fast-paced hoops that the region really started to embrace basketball as more of an equal.

The original seven schools that became the Atlantic Coast Conference were North Carolina,

NC State, Wake Forest, South Carolina, Clemson, Duke, and Maryland. Virginia came along a few months

later to round out the league with eight teams. Case and his wolf pack

dominated the Southern Conference post-season tournament, one because they had great teams and two

because with the newly built Reynolds Coliseum on campus, he insisted that they host the tournament

every spring, providing a nice little home court advantage. When the ACC formed,

Case took the tradition of the post-season tournament and he went a step further,

saying that the winner of this tournament should be crowned the league champion and should

be the league's representative in the NCAA tournament. No other league was doing that,

and with the expansion of the NCAA tournament from eight teams to 22 in 1953, the timing

actually worked out. When it was just an eight-team bracket, there was only one representative

per region that had not been associated specifically with the conference. The expansion to

22 and eventually 25 teams allowed for automatic bids to specific leagues such as the ACC.

Coaches mostly resisted that idea and instead insisted that the regular season champion,

the team that played better over the course of several months, should be crowned at the end,

instead of a team that played well for three days. But Case loved the concept of the tournament.

It was reminiscent of his time as a high school coach in Indiana. It was exciting, and of course,

additional ticket revenue from an event like that pumped money right back into the athletic

programs of the member institutions. So here in the first edition of the ACC tournament,

the Duke Blue Devils had been tops during the regular season and they were ranked number 11 in the

country. Case's Wolfpack had been the fourth best team in the conference. After it stayed top

North Carolina by a point in the opening round, and Duke pumbled Virginia by 28, the Wolfpack and

Blue Devils met in the semifinals. State won that one on its home court, 79-75, to advance to the

championship game against Dickie Hemrich and Wake Forest. This first title game on this day headed

over time. The extra period was back and forth until State's Dick Tyler rebounded his

own missed shot and later then to give the Wolfpack a two-point lead. Wake could not find the

equalizing points on the other end, and NC State won 82-80. On three successive nights,

the pack had beaten their greatest rivals to win the conference title. Now, interesting fact,

after the game, Coach Case did something that had not been seen in the South, but would actually

become a tradition that you now see everywhere this time of year. He sent his team back out on

the floor after the game to cut down the nets. On this day in 2015, the NCAA dropped the hammer on

Syracuse head basketball coach Jim Bayheim, suspending him for nine games, revoking 12 scholarships,

and vacating 101 wins. It was the result of a long investigation conducted by the NCAA that

dated as far back as 2001. The investigation uncovered academic misconduct, extra benefits given

to players, a failure to follow the drug testing policy and impermissible booster activity.

The program was placed on a five-year probation and excluded from postseason play that season.

While Bayheim acknowledged responsibility since he was the head of the program,

his statement also through the spotlight on what he called a former employee of the local YMCA

and my former director of basketball operations in order to impose an unprecedented

series of penalties upon the university and the men's basketball program. That former employee

of the YMCA was a booster who paid two basketball players and three football players up to $8,000

to volunteer at the local YMCA. After appeals played out, most of the sanctions were upheld,

but the scholarship revocation was reduced from 12 down to 8. He stands second on the all-time

list of winningest college basketball coaches with 1,015. And if you add in the 101 wins

back into his coaching resume, he would still be second on the list to Duke's Mike Chishewski.

On this day in 2000, it was another episode of belt mess with Shaq. This day's victim was

the LA Clippers. So it is Shaq's birthday, happy birthday Shaq. In 2000, he was with the LA

Lakers and he was turning 28 on this day. So the Lakers and the Clippers shared an arena at this point

and when they played each other, one team was designated as the home team and on this night,

the Clippers were the designated home team. And so they controlled the ticketing for the game.

With it being his birthday, he asked the Clippers for a few extra tickets for his family coming

to the game that night. The Clippers said, no. So he bought the extra tickets and then he recouped

his money with interest that night. Shaq got it by 8-6-9. Shaq backs in, turns, shoots,

keeps the jumper and his birthday is good. That's his first day back.

Take it by George. They'll get a chance to get it back to Shaq.

So the underneath gives the Shaq. Shaq slammed off.

Shaq scored 61, grabbed 23 rebounds in a 123-103 Lakers win. It was the first 60-20

performance in the league in more than 30 years and it not been done since Wild Chamberlain did it

back in 1969. Clippers' interim head coach Jim Todd said after the game, it was obvious he wanted

to make a point. And he did, teaching the Clippers a lesson along the way, don't ever make Shaq pay

for his birthday tickets. At time now for today's, that's got nothing to do with sports, fun fact.

Apocalypse Preppers and really all of us owe a debt of gratitude to Napoleon Bonaparte.

You see, it was Napoleon who put into motion the modern convenience we all enjoy now of canned food.

Back in 1795, the little corporal held a contest to find a better way to keep an army's worth of food

safer for longer while also making it tastier. A candy maker actually won the contest by putting

food in jars, corking it, and then sealing it with wax. That method was improved upon by a

French engineer a few years later in the 1800s when he started using tin cans since it was

lighter and less fragile. And therefore, increasing the shelf life of that can of peaches for you to

enjoy during the zombie apocalypse.

This has been an original, Thrive Suite production.