NC State student’s ‘One Shining Moment’ filled a void college basketball fans needed
In the wake of Thursday’s cancellation of the NCAA tournament, Max Goren spent a couple days watching old “One Shining Moment” videos on YouTube, trying to fill the void so many fans felt. Then the N.C. State freshman went about filling it himself.
Without much else to do as he spent spring break at his parents’ house in Winston-Salem, the 18-year-old got out his laptop Saturday and started pulling clips from this unexpectedly abbreviated college basketball season, set them to the famous Luther Vandross song and did his best impersonation of the CBS post-championship ritual compilation of fans, bands, buzzer-beaters, dunks, celebrations and tears.
Three hours later, he posted it on YouTube, tweeted out a link and figured he’d amused himself enough for one day.
Then an Axios newsletter saw it and picked it up. And CBS personalities started re-tweeting it. And NBA players showed up in the comments. So did the song’s original composer. By Sunday night, Goren’s phone was lighting up like a slot machine and he was getting interview requests from national outlets.
“I didn’t realize people were looking for something like that or needed something like that so badly,” Goren said Monday morning, by which point the video had more than 37,000 views on YouTube. “I’m glad I was able to scratch that itch for some.”
Individual teams have started posting their own “One Shining Moment” videos since then, but Goren’s is still the closest thing to a national compliation out there.
Goren is an unlikely March Sadness celebrity, even in this strange season derailed by the novel coronavirus and COVID-19. His father Dave is a more well-known figure, a former Triad TV sportscaster, the radio sideline reporter for Wake Forest football and executive director of the National Sports Media Association, but even now, Max has only 150 followers on Twitter.
He’s a sports-management student at State who doesn’t edit much video, although he’s put together a few YouTube videos for friends. He took some time with a few clips Saturday — syncing the behind-the-basket angle of Stephen F. Austin’s winning bucket with the radio call — but mostly he grabbed anything that looked, felt or smelled like a shining-moment: A montage of Obi Toppin dunks, Cassius Winston kissing the floor at Michigan State, Brad Brownell celebrating with his Clemson players.
That meant a few teams and conferences were overlooked entirely (San Diego State and the SEC), and a lot of Duke losing, but at that point, who cared?
“I didn’t think hardly anyone was going to see it,” Goren said.
So many did that suddenly, some fans were as mad at Goren for the oversights as they would have been at CBS.
“People should know that I don’t necessarily hate Duke,” Goren said. “There’s just a lot of highlights of them losing because those were the highlights out there.”
Since then, he has received inquiries from an NFL agent who wants him to put together highlight tapes for his clients — “I might just rest on my laurels a little bit,” Goren said — and women’s basketball fans who’d like to see, for the first time, a women’s “One Shining Moment.”
“Something tells me it might be hard to find highlights with those replay angles,” Goren said. “Finding those clips on YouTube with the good angles for the men’s ‘One Shining Moment’ was hard enough, although I think it would be nice to do justice to the women’s season since they never get an actual ‘One Shining Moment’ from CBS. If someone was inclined to do that, I would watch it.”
For now, Goren’s shining moment is over.
