I heard a kid from North Carolina, his name was Pat Sullivan, singing One Shining Moment over my shoulder as the players were all huddled around,” Jim Nantz explained. “In ’92 we already ran credits over One Shining Moment, so it was already bastardized, if you will, but as I was on the floor with Billy Packer and we were interviewing Dean Smith after the Championship win over Michigan. “There’s a whole audience out there that waits to see that at the end- you can’t dispense with it. And I said guys, I beg to differ,” Nantz continued. They thought it was getting stale already. “The sixth year it ran, it was going to be the last time we were going to run it. In 1992, a Tar Heel state duo (Nantz was born in Charlotte) saved the emotionally inspiring montage from the cutting room floor. The building still has thousands of people lingering, standing still for those three minutes,” he continued. “I’ve led to it on a number of occasions, Greg Gumbel now leads to it and it brings closure to a three week festival. The One Shining Moment of that year is embedded below: “Doug heard it and thought this could be our going off-the-air piece in the Final Four, and we’ve played it every year since,” Jim Nantz exclusively told The Sports Bank in 2014. Then CBS Sports Creative Director, the late Doug Towey, first decided to use “One Shining Moment” as a way to close the network’s broadcast of the 1987 Tournament. It’s astonishing that CBS was once dangerously close to giving it the axe. These days, you just can’t conclude the NCAA Tournament without it. If it weren’t for the combined efforts of broadcaster Jim Nantz and former UNC Tar Heel Pat Sullivan, the March Madness staple would have been cut entirely. When you watch the iconic “One Shining Moment” video montage a week from tonight, after the 2023 national title game, take a minute or two to think about how it nearly disappeared. (Editor’s note: in honor of Final Four weekend coming, we are now re-publishing this exclusive that originally ran in 2014.)
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