Lario, like many in the early radio days and before television, sponsored Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball teams to generate excitement for their product in the sport sections of widely read newspapers.
Lario would get outstanding publicity and marketing value, and Johnson would get back to his native Kansas, where he earlier found success coaching at Wichita (State) University.
[8] But in the tough AAU Missouri Valley League, the McPherson Globe Refiners won outright against more noteworthy rivals from Denver and Kansas City.
[10] The Globe Refiners season started with high hopes, and by August 1936, a farm boy from McPherson County Kansas, Bill Wheatley, accepted the first Olympic gold medal from another Kansan, Dr. James Naismith.
[11][12][13] The McPherson Globe Refiners played a national schedule with barnstorming road trips to Louisiana, Washington, DC, and Madison Square Garden in New York City.
[15] Before sold out crowds, the Refiners won matches in the opening rounds knowing that getting to the AAU Final meant entry into the US Olympic tryouts, and the chance to make the 1936 US basketball team.
The amateur ruling bodies devised a 10 regional district playoff system for college and university entrants, which later evolved into the March Madness of the NCAA's Final Four.
The quarter final winners were McPherson outscoring Temple, Universal Pictures over Arkansas, Washington beating DePaul, and the YMCA team besting Utah State.