“One Shining Moment,” the uber-cheesy song that CBS plays at the conclusion of the NCAA men’s basketball championship, known to all now as “March Madness,” has finally taken a life of its own and not just because it has its own website. If you are not aware that this song exists, at the very end of the championship game broadcast, this song is played while highlights of the entire tournament – all the highs, all the lows, the buzzer beaters, the cheerleaders, the fans, the champions, everything that can be considered a recap – are shown. For a while it was a “underground” hit – it was so bad and so cheesy 80’s no one that I know could understand why CBS continued to play it but at the same time, like a good episode of “Knight Rider,” it always left you wanting more.
CBS has realized this fact and is now openly advertising “One Shining Moment” as part of the whole championship process. Greg Gumbo mentions it in his broadcast as he is wont to say, “We’ll see who is on top when ‘One Shining Moment’ plays.” Players long to hear it because it means that they are the best – a former star called it the “best 3 minutes in basketball.” CBS even spoofed it in previews for some of its sitcoms: the stars of “All About My Mother” enjoy a bar snack (a slo-mo dip of a nacho is shown) while the song plays.
The NYT today had an article about the history of the song which I found sort of interesting so I posted it after the jump. While G-Town won’t be listening to it this year, Roy Hibbert and Jeff Green are only juniors so if they stay one more year, there is always next year.
Cheering Section: Guy Walks Into a Bar, Leaves With a Song by Peter Hyman on April 1, 2007
The short video montage that CBS uses to recap the agony and the ecstasy of March Madness is an N.C.A.A. tournament hallmark. Millions of college basketball fans are familiar with its musical accompaniment, but few are aware that the song originated as an effort to impress a pretty waitress.
The composer, David Barrett, was once a struggling folk singer. Having finished a show in late March 1986 at the Varsity Inn in East Lansing, Mich., he was watching a Boston Celtics game at the bar when an attractive woman sat beside him after her shift.
“She was the most beautiful waitress on the planet,” Barrett said. “The kind of woman who is so good looking that you don’t even bother talking to her.”
But the soft-spoken Barrett, then 31, tried to break the ice with an exposition on the poetic majesty of Larry Bird’s talents.
“I looked up at the TV to watch a fast break and when I turned back around, she had left without saying a word,” he said.
Barrett was determined to overcome the snub by making the woman understand how it felt to play basketball “in the zone” — by writing a song. He left the bar with the beginnings of a melody and what he hoped would be a good working title, “One Shining Moment.” The next morning, Barrett said, he wrote lyrics for the 3-minute-45-second tune in 20 minutes on a paper napkin.
Tomorrow night, that song will be the musical endnote to the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament for the 20th consecutive year. “One Shining Moment” has become “the anthem of college basketball,” the CBS announcer Jim Nantz said.
“It’s the official coronation now, more so than the hardware,” Nantz added, speaking by phone Thursday from Atlanta, site of the Final Four this weekend.
In 1986, Barrett received an assist from his high school friend Armen Keteyian, then a staff writer for Sports Illustrated, who passed a demo tape of his music to the television networks. CBS acquired “One Shining Moment” to accompany the highlights after Super Bowl XXI in January 1987, but the postgame interviews ran long and the package was never broadcast.
“David was crestfallen,” Doug Towey, the creative director of CBS Sports, said. “But a few months later I got back in touch and told him we wanted to use it for the Final Four. At this point, nobody can conceive of the tournament without it.”
“One Shining Moment,” with vocals by Barrett, made its Final Four debut on March 30, 1987, after Keith Smart hit a baseline jumper in the final seconds to give Indiana a 74-73 victory over Syracuse.
“I was sitting in a bar thinking, ‘Wow, what a game,’ like everybody else,” said Barrett, now married with two children and living in Ann Arbor, Mich. “I had no idea whether they were going to use the songs.”
Barrett had also composed a piano-and-strings piece, “Golden Street,” which was also unveiled that night. It is played as the national champions cut down the nets, as a prelude to the montage.
Barrett, who owns the rights to the songs, said he receives a generous “synchronization fee” from CBS each year and has a separate arrangement with the National Collegiate Athletic Association for their use during the tournament.
“One Shining Moment,” written with basketball in mind, has found its rightful home. After all, the 6-foot-3 Barrett was a standout shooting guard at his suburban Detroit high school and earned a basketball scholarship to Albion College. When an ankle injury ended his playing career, music became his sole focus.
Barrett’s most famous song has a cult following. Mateen Cleaves, who won a national title with Michigan State in 2000, has described “One Shining Moment” as “the best three minutes of March.” But it also has detractors.
“Taken on purely musical terms, it’s not a great song,” Evan Serpick, an editor at Rolling Stone, said. “The lyrics are melodramatic, and in any other context it would seem silly. Yet, somehow, juxtaposed with the emotional footage, it has a gravitas that works.”
Despite regime changes at CBS and the introduction of vocals by Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross, “One Shining Moment” is a mainstay. (The Vandross version — his last recording before he died in 2005 — will be played tomorrow night.)
The song opened doors for Barrett and allowed him to make a living by pursuing music he is passionate about. He has since written the scores for professional golf, tennis and Olympic broadcasts, and for a half-dozen television shows.
A few years ago, Barrett said, he had an accidental reunion with the East Lansing waitress after he played a show there. She had brought along her two children and looked “just as beautiful as she was the night I tried to explain Larry Bird to her,” he said.
Barrett reintroduced himself and thanked her for the song. She laughed, having heard for years that she had been his inspiration.
“I owe you one,” he told her, wisely deciding to say no more.
The song had said it all.
E-mail: cheers@nytimes.com