

And Barrett knows even in the greatest game ever played, there can be but one winner. The song evokes not just a basketball game, but the greatest basketball game ever played. "The ball is tipped / and there you are / You're running for your life / You're a shooting star." Those are the first four lines of "One Shining Moment" - the lyrical equivalent of a giant, soaring bald eagle clutching two flaming basketballs in its talons.īarrett's lyrics blend hyperbole and majesty, the real and the sublime. You can nail down OSM's fandom to four elements: "One Shining Moment" is undeniably cheesy, but people still love it. Why do people enjoy "One Shining Moment"? But the song's lyrics and earnest message about playing beautiful basketball didn't. The piano sound changed, as did the bass, Barrett said. The song, along with the montage, grew with every new version. In 1994, CBS switched to a version by Teddy Pendergrass:Īnd in 2003, it used Luther Vandross's version of the song: Barrett's version of the song played after Indiana's one-point win over Syracuse the next year, and it played at the end of the NCAA men's basketball broadcast until 1993: I went home and wrote it."įrom there, Barrett shopped the song around through a friend, and it settled with CBS. "The next thing I knew, I had this inner dialogue going on, and somehow, ‘one shining moment’ came out of my mouth and I knew exactly what I was going to do. Then the phrase came to me, that he was in the moment," Barrett told. "I tried to explain to her how amazing was. Barrett attempted to translate Bird's greatness into song in a bid to impress a waitress. In the 1985–86 NBA season, Bird was averaging 25.8 points per game, 9.8 rebounds per game, and 6.8 assists per game, as well as shooting close to 50 percent from the field - a stellar year that ended in a championship for Bird and the Celtics. Lewis.)īarrett said in an interview with that he created the song while watching Larry Bird play. (Sadly, he did not win his Emmy for "One Shining Moment" but rather for scoring a PBS documentary on C.S.

When people talk about "One Shining Moment," they're referring to the musical montage that plays at the conclusion of the NCAA men's basketball national championship game.Įmmy award–winning composer David Barrett created the song in 1986. This powerful combination of '80s piano, earnest lyrics, and clips of players crying has the power to bring college basketball fans together and, perhaps most important, give a proper sendoff to the season. It's about hoping "your" team can win it all.īut even though college basketball fans can be contentious and quarrelsome, there will be three minutes after the game when everyone puts aside their differences: the One Shining Moment montage. College basketball isn't about making friends. While this is a momentous occasion for fans of those teams, many college basketball fans will be rooting for the whole thing to be over so that the next season can start, so their team has another shot at the title.

Barrett said both agreed to let the schools use the song this year because ‘we’re all in this together.’Ĭopyright 2020 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit - All rights reserved.On Monday, April 6, Wisconsin and Duke will battle for the NCAA men's basketball championship. Moments that made us all smile.īarrett owns the song he wrote on a napkin all those years ago. Schools using their regular season highlights to those same familiar lyrics. One internet search and you can find multiple renditions. “They asked, ‘is it OK to use it, we made the tournament for the first time and our moment was stolen.’ I, of course, agreed.” “Yesterday I spoke to Penn State, they reached out,” Barrett said. This year, there was no tournament, but that didn’t mean no One Shining Moment. Basketball is a metaphor for so many things in life.” “Not all moments are equal and when you work really hard and there is that moment. They completely got it.”Įver since that first year, the song has been used after the tournament to tell the story of hard work, passion, victory and defeat. “I had no idea what they were going to do with it,” Barrett said. The network liked it a lot and put together the first montage when Indiana beat Syracuse in 1987.

That’s when Barrett’s friend, Armen Keteyian of Sports Illustrated, took the cassette to CBS Sports. “So, I wrote down the song title on a napkin.”īarrett paired the lyrics to music and recorded it. “I thought, this is worth writing about,” said David Barrett, a basketball fan and former player. He was inspired by Larry Bird at the height of his career. The song was written in 1986 by a composer from Hazlett, Michigan. DETROIT – It’s something fans wait for, the One Shining Moment montage, at the end of March Madness.
