One Shining Moment
If you read our blogs, which, if you are here, then you are 1 of the 4 people who do, congratulations. It is that time of year again. Last year, I wrote a blog about the best time of the year during the months of March and April. The first Monday in April - or this year, because of leap year, the second - is known as the men’s college basketball championship game. The day before is always the women’s national championship game.
What a national championship game it was, as well as the whole tournament. The women put on a record-breaking tournament and the play was phenomenal. The final four, which pitted North Carolina State versus South Carolina and Connecticut versus Iowa, were great games, and the latter was a matchup for the ages. Watching Paige Bueckers go up against Caitlan Clark was a joy to watch. Sunday, Iowa took on South Carolina, and that game did not disappoint either. After a back and forth for a good part of the game, Caitlan Clark could only do so much, scoring 30 points, but South Carolina pulled away and won 87-75.
As for the men, Connecticut took on Purdue in a matchup that many would have expected if you had asked them before the tournament had started. Purdue, known to bow out pretty early, losing to a 16 seed last season and only the second team to ever do so, was even better this season. Purdue has 7’4” center Zach Edey, who has dominated all season and won his second consecutive Naismith Award as Player of the Year. UConn, the defending national champions, have been the hands down favorite the whole tournament.
The NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are so much fun to watch, and the action is great. Every year, millions of people throw away money betting on brackets, thinking they know who will win or maybe they have no clue but they can have bragging rights over friends for a year; but the main point of this specific blog isn’t what happens during every game. It’s what comes after all the games have been completed.
A song written by David Barrett in the late 1980s was shared with a friend, a reporter many know, Armen Keteyian. He shared it with CBS executives who asked to use the song to close the Super Bowl in 1987, but the song never made air. Then during the 1987 NCAA Tournament (sorry Syracuse fans), he was asked again if CBS could use the song. He once again agreed and a tradition was born. From that point on, every year after the postgame ceremonies and commentary, comes that song, One Shining Moment. The song has been sung by many over the years but the most known is Luther Vandross, which was the last song he ever recorded.
Before there was the internet and YouTube, the only way to watch the One Shining Moment montage was to stay up until after the championship game ended. Some don’t care about the game and only want to see the montage while others watch, whether good or bad and wait to see that final moment of that year’s tournament. Some stay up way past their bedtime, whether a child or adult, to watch, including yours truly begging his mother to let him stay up when he was a child. I never won that argument, so I would have to record it on a VCR (kids, look it up).
It marks the end of one of the best sporting events but also showcases the exhilaration and greatness of so many who played in that year’s tournament and whom you may have forgotten once they were knocked out.