2010 NCAA Tournament: With "One Shining Moment," CBS Drops the Ball

I'm hurting. The NCAA tournament ends, and "One Shining Moment" is the celebration of what made the tournament great in a two—and—a—half minute format.

"One Shining Moment" should have been a layup this year, considering it was one of the best tournaments since the expansion in 1985.

Instead, I'm trying to recover, as if I saw an old friend get beaten up on the news.

It's not Jennifer Hudson's fault. Well, it's not completely her fault. After all, someone did hire her. She is the new voice of the anthem of college basketball, and her rendition sounded like Saint Mary's first half against Baylor.

CBS hired Hudson expecting to get the Academy Award-winning performer busting out a soulful performance previously sung by Luther Vandross. Instead, the viewers got the Jennifer Hudson who finished behind John Stevens, the beloved redhead crooner from Buffalo.

CBS deserves a lot of blame on the production side for this too. It seemed lazy, with a few good moments. Having the Bob Huggins-Da'Sean Butler moment from Saturday was perfect, as were the spotlight highlights of Michigan State beating Maryland and Northern Iowa winning against Kansas.

With so many highlights, though, they showed only a few big moments. They didn't even have the tipoff at the championship game or any announcing from Jim Nantz.

Of course, showing more moments would have taken away precious time from showing Jennifer Hudson in the studio. We know she's singing it—we can tell in one second it's not Luther Vandross.

Give me a few more tournament memories. Washington hit a game winner. Wake Forest hit a game winner. Was Jimmer Fredette even in it? I don't know since I'm too hurt to watch it again.

I don't get CBS' thought process behind this. How many Jennifer Hudson fans were going to tune in 20 to 30 minutes after a basketball game to see her sing a two—minute song? TiVo the basketball game and miss it since it will run over, and you'll be stuck watching it online, causing no spike in ratings at all.

John Stevens would have done better, and with the right haircut he looks a little like Gordon Hayward.

It's just silly to end the tournament with such a thud.

CBS does such a great job with the tournament, and included nice Dick Enberg tributes, yet they could have done a wonderful "One Shining Moment" tribute and dropped the ball on it.

Teddy Pendergrass did the song for six years, and he died in January of this year. It would have been a fitting tribute to NCAA tournament and Pendergrass fans to have his version end the tournament this year.

Sometimes the most logical things are the easiest. Is Owl City doing "The Power of the Dream" for the women's tournament? (It took a lot of research to figure both the annoying Fireflies band and that the women's tournament had a song). I don't think so.

In passing, and considering that Jennifer Hudson is following Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross in singing the song, just hope that ESPN gets the tournament next year, there are 96 teams, and the tournament is nowhere near as exciting as it was this year. Yuck.

On second thought, go to YouTube, type in "One Shining Moment 1998," and notice that Pendergrass is nowhere to be seen in it. I know Vandross was shown in the first one he did, which was not good either, but at least in the years after that he was just singing.