‘In 49 states ... it’s just basketball ...’

Former Indy copywriter lays claim to iconic motto

20 Jun 2025 - The Indianapolis Star

Sports In-depth

Dana Hunsinger Benbow Indianapolis Star USA TODAY NETWORK

INDIANAPOLIS – Coach Rick Carlisle was on the television screen with Indiana Pacers fans roaring in the background. The Pacers had just won the Eastern Conference Finals and Carrie Voorhis was watching the fanfare from her home in Studio City, California, when she heard Carlisle saying those 10 words, her words.

To Voorhis, it seemed as if Carlisle was almost talking in slow motion. He said it to the TV camera with a rare Carlisle smile.

In 49 states ... it’s just basketball. But this is Indiana.

Voorhis started screaming. Then she started texting her family and friends. Voorhis says she wrote that motto more than 25 years ago when she was a young advertising copywriter in Indy working on a campaign to bring a WNBA team to the city.

It is a phrase that’s been used on merchandise, shot glasses, towels, bumper stickers and decals. It’s on handcrafted signs fans wave at games. It’s used in social media posts about IU and Purdue basketball. It’s been used alongside an image of Fever star Caitlin Clark. And it has been splashed all over Gainbridge Fieldhouse as the Pacers make their Finals run for the team’s first NBA title.

For Game 3, the yellow shirts draped over 18,000 seats inside the fieldhouse read in blue writing:

The full phrase was on T-shirts given to fans during the Eastern Conference Finals last season.

Yet, as popular as the phrase has become in the world of Indiana basketball, used not just by the Pacers but by television analysts, basketball lovers, youth teams, college players -- there is no official record of how it originated.

Just Voorhis’ memory. And she distinctly remembers crafting that phrase.

Searches of Google, IndyStar archives and newspapers nationwide turned up nothing as to how the motto came to be. IndyStar reached out to the Pacers multiple times, who did not respond, and also reached out to the advertising agency, Young & Laramore, where Voorhis worked when she said she wrote the phrase. The agency declined to comment.

But after Carlisle said those words on national TV, Voorhis’ husband, Scott Montgomery, made a post about how his wife deserved some credit, what a source of pride those 10 words were for her. IndyStar tracked down Voorhis in California who is now an award-winning mystery writer.

She said she still sometimes pinches herself -- just how big this thing she wrote on a whim as a 20-something copywriter has become.

“I was just amazed,” said Voorhis. “They’re on their way to the Finals and it was the first thing Coach Carlisle said. And it was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”

‘You just knew that basketball was different in this state’

Vorrhis grew up in Kokomo in a family of sports fanatics. Her dad and all of his siblings played basketball or football or both. Her grandfather’s nickname was “Coach.”

As a young girl, she said her life was like a black-and-white Indiana basketball postcard. The sport was part of everything they did, shootarounds on her grandparents’ farm, watching IU basketball. In 1987, the family watched IU play its first game in the NCAA tournament at her grandmother’s house, sitting on the couch. When IU won that first game, Voorhis’ father made the family watch every single game after that at her grandmother’s house, sitting on the couch. It worked. IU won the national title.

Voorhis even tried the sport herself and was pretty good at it as a tall, 5foot-6 fifth grader, towering over her teammates. But by her freshman year of high school, everyone else had caught up to her and so she would just become a major fan.

After graduating from IU as an English major, Voorhis started working for the company which published the “For

Dummies” book series. Then she landed a job as an account manager at Young & Laramore, working on Steak ‘n Shake’s account.

One day, the company needed some headlines on deadline for the burger company’s placemats. Voorhis pitched in to help. Her headlines were so good, she soon landed a position as a copywriter.

When the Pacers came to the company for help in bringing a WNBA team to the city, Voorhis’ background and love of basketball made her a natural fit.

“And at the time, we’re trying to figure out how to advertise for literally this project where there’s no logos, there’s not a team name, there aren’t team colors,” said Voorhis. “We have nothing to work with.”

The mission was to get the city excited about a pro women’s basketball team.

“Whichever team got the most commitment for tickets got the franchise. And Young & Laramore’s main strategy was to do a TV, bus board and outdoor campaign that simply stated, ‘Buy the Tickets, Get the Team,’” said Montgomery, who worked at Young & Laramore at the time. “A lot of headlines and spots surrounded the joy and power of women’s basketball.”

Voorhis took it to a much broader level, highlighting the entire state’s insane, crazy and unmatched love of basketball.

“You just knew that basketball was different in this state. Basketball was always everywhere,” said Voorhis. “I mean, this is Indiana. If anybody should have a WNBA team, it’s Indiana.”

The “in 49 states” line was used in outdoor advertising, on bus boards and radio spots, including one with Tamika Catchings, Voorhis said.

While her words weren’t the main theme of the campaign, it stuck, the campaign worked and, in June 1999, Indy announced it had gotten a WNBA franchise named the Indiana Fever.

From that point, there are records of the phrase being used inside then-Conseco Fieldhouse in 2000, lit up on the scoreboard, as the Pacers made their last run in the NBA Finals.

One Lakers columnist in town for the Finals poked fun at the motto, writing Indiana forgot to end the phrase “In 49 states, it’s just basketball. But this is Indiana” appropriately with the words “where there’s NOTHING ELSE TO DO.”

While history has not recorded the origin of the phrase, Voorhis says she knows she wrote it. You don’t forget things like that.

“I don’t really know how it went from being a headline on a WNBA bus board to being something that they used regularly and that people cited,” she said. “I mean, I was just, I was amazed as anyone.

“I’m so happy and so proud that something I did is so beloved by folks who love basketball, too. The moment Rick Carlisle said it will be a story I tell for years.”

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. 

Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com. 

Get IndyStar’s Pacers coverage sent directly to your inbox with our Pacers Update newsletter.