There has never been any doubt in my mind that the best part of March Madness is the highlight reel they show after the championship game. Listening to “One Shining Moment” as they show the best moments from that year’s tournament is enough to choke up even the most hardened of all sports fans. In fact, just thinking of the words “the ball is tipped/and there you are/you’re running for your life/you’re a shooting star” made me a little misty right now. So it was more than a little hard for me to have to deal with the fact Duke ended up getting the prime spot in this year’s montage. Yes, that’s right, it bothered me more that the Blue Devils had the final moments of the “One Shining Moment” video than it did they won the national title.

Obviously the two things go hand in hand and, in case you hadn’t picked up on it, I am not a fan of the Duke basketball team. I can tell you exactly when and why my ill will toward the Blue Devils started. It was sometime in 1989 and the reason had a lot to do with one Mr. Christian Laettner. I cannot, however, pinpoint what it was I disliked so much about Laettner when I was a teenager. Despite the fact I lived in Oregon and my parents were both graduates of Texas A&M I was a diehard University of Michigan basketball fan in those days. Rumeal Robinson, Terry Mills, Loy Vaught they were my guys and in 1989 I was richly rewarded for my faith in them. But somewhere along the way Laettner began to get under my skin and he took the entire Duke program with him. This meant I spent a good part of the next decade and a half bothered by Coach K and his team’s success. It also meant I enjoyed the brief respite the Blue Devils descent into relative mediocrity the past five or six years offered. If only it had never ended.

What made Duke’s win even more insufferable was the fact they beat the ultimate underdog. Now I’m not going to get into the whole, let’s compare Butler to the team from the movie “Hoosiers.” Personally I think that whole thing was kind of dumb. It’s not like Butler is an NAIA team for Pete’s sake. They are actually a very good basketball team with an NBA prospect that had not lost a game in over three months. But this does not change the fact they were not supposed to be in the Final Four much less the final game, because they weren’t. Going into the tournament, if they had reached the Sweet 16 most people would have considered that a good run for them. But their run did not stop at the round of 16. It continued into the round of eight and four and finally two and then Duke came along and ruined it all. They ruined the great story. They ruined Gordon Hayward’s night and they ruined my “One Shining Moment.” And somewhere, I am certain Christian Laettner laughed.

So, just like the Butler Bulldogs, there was no shining moment for me this year. Yeah, I watched it and maybe the chills crept up my arm a little at the beginning (even with Jennifer Hudson singing) but by the time it was all over and they showed Duke celebrating the title they were all gone and all I could think of was turning the channel.