one shining moment...

i missed the best part of the tourney this year for the first time ever. cbs' cheesy one shining moment at the end of the national championship, in the words of andre the giant, "is some pretty powerful stuff". i was working and could barely even watch the second half not to mention o.s.m. very disapointing. here's the 2002 o.s.m. for your enjoyment and for all you maryland fans out there.

some background:

It's hard to imagine a song that begins "The ball is tipped" was not created for a basketball game. But when Barrett was sitting at a bar at 2 a.m. watching Larry Bird highlights, the idea for a song popped into his head. And when he went home to an apartment that had three pieces of furniture to write and sound out the song on a piano, it was still just a song.

Nearly 20 years later, it's almost inconceivable to end the tournament without this song. Luther Vandross' recording is now used for the tournament-highlight package shown after the NCAA Finals, both on TV sets across the globe and inside the arena. It's available on I-Tunes. It's played as part of the intro on EA Sports' NCAA College Basketball video game. Inside the NCAA museum in Indianapolis, visitors can watch all the highlight videos dating to 1987.

And this song was originally never supposed to be a part of a CBS NCAA highlight reel.

Thanks to Barrett's longtime friend, CBS reporter Armen Keteyian, the song found its way to CBS Sports creative director Doug Towey in 1986. After listening to "every piece of music in the world, and after I heard this I thought, 'This is scary,' " Towey said. "It was the perfect piece for what I was looking for."