“Feel the beat of your heart” often accompanies a player thumping or tapping his chest “Feel the wind in your face” is apparently a euphemism for a drive toward the basket or a charging foul, with the victim skidding backward across the court. But the bridge takes top honors for cheese. The second verse tackles adversity: Cue the missed shots, the injured players limping off the court, the bowed heads. As it unfolds, the montage shows plenty of scoring, breakaways, and the moxie of that year’s Cinderella team. The song’s opening verse is all about inspiration and hard work. By the time we pulled up at the hotel, we had traveled back through the years, one montage at a time, to land somewhere in the early 1990s. Stuck in traffic on the Interstate for nearly an hour, my bus-mates and I were a captive audience to the canon of One Shining Moment on a continuous loop. ” There it was, on boxy televisions suspended from the ceiling of the bus: row after row of One Shining Moment. Vandross, as he sang, “The ball is tipped/and there you are. Shortly after arriving at the airport, I boarded an NCAA-chartered bus ferrying reporters and staff members downtown, only to hear those shimmering opening bars of piano, then the zealous horns, and finally Mr. So unimpressed, in fact, that I remember nothing of the montage itself-only surprise at my friends’ obsession with a song performed by Luther Vandross, a silky R&B crooner.Īfter that, I managed to steer clear of One Shining Moment until last year, when I went to Detroit to cover my first Final Four. I had always switched off the television as soon as the game was over. I had no idea what they were talking about. “But we have to wait for ‘One Shining Moment,’” they said. My buddies, still seated, looked at me in disbelief. Shortly after the buzzer sounded, I stood up to leave. My introduction to One Shining Moment was accidental: I was at a bar in Chicago, watching the 2003 championship game between Syracuse and Kansas with two male friends. It is a power ballad without peer, they say. It airs shortly after the conclusion of the championship game, a montage that pulls together dozens of video clips from the three-week tournament and finishes with footage of that night’s game.įeaturing an ensemble cast of athletes-with coaches, cheerleaders, and fans in supporting roles-the video is cheesy, sentimental, and, for many fans, irresistible. One Shining Moment has been the iconic capstone to the CBS Sports telecast of the NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament since 1987. It is also one of the sappiest creations ever to grace modern television. The three-minute song-and-video production is a fast-paced, colorful affair. Every year on the first Monday in April, as the national champions brush confetti from their eyes, college-basketball fans revel in the musical phenomenon known as One Shining Moment.
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