“One Shining Moment”, Not Two Or Three

”One Shining Moment” is my favorite part of the NCAA Tournament telecast.  It is the pumpkin pie after a delicious three-week Thanksgiving feast of great basketball.  It is your reward from CBS for enduring countless hours of terrible analysis from Seth Davis and Clark Kellogg, horrid commentary from Billy Packer, 6,784 promos for The Masters, and the exact same commercial for ; an audio-visual “our bad” from The Eye that makes up for most of its faults, and simultaneously reminds you what’s so great about college basketball.

As I’ve said before, “One Shining Moment” is the best three minutes of the TV sports year, and CBS IS RUINING IT!!!!  First, they used snippets of the song for a “How I Met Your Mother” commercial during the first weekend of this year’s tournament.  “How I Met Your Mother”?!!!  I enjoy the show, but using “One Shining Moment” to promote “How I Met  Your Mother” is like cracking open a vintage bottle of wine to celebrate your mail being delivered.  It’s crazy.

If that weren’t bad enough, CBS just played a brand new full-length “One Shining Moment” montage with clips from previouus NCAA tournaments.  And they played it during the stupid Final Four preview show that no one watches.  What a waste.

CBS, don’t you see that you’re overexposing one of your best assets?  “One Shining Moment” is special.  Literally special, as in exceptional, or rare.  And by playing it over and over again you are turning into something ordinary, something expected, something played-out.  You’re turning it into the “Black Eyed Peas”.

I know I shouldn’t expect restraint from the network that would broadcast “CSI: Topeka” if there was money in it.  But in a time when everything unique and successful in entertainment is sequeled, trilogied, and spun-off into derivative, mindless garbage, I wish CBS would buck the trend and preserve the integrity of televised sports’ signature moment.

It’s called “One Shining Moment” for a reason.

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One Shining Moment