Burdell’s Bracket 2022: Theme Music for Sports TV Broadcasts

After taking a year off due to not having an idea I was passionate about and being inundated with graduate student work, we return this year with another Burdell’s Bracket. This time we try to find the best musical themes broadcast in the field of sports.

Background:

If you are a regular reader of From Rumble Seat Over the past few years, you probably remember previous editions of the Burdell Bracket. Unfortunately, I haven’t been particularly inspired by a tech-specific theme this year – previous editions have included tech buildings and historical figures – but I’ve chosen one that seems to inspire particularly passionate reactions among tech fans. sport, that of their favorite television broadcast theme. music.

Or maybe I’ve just listened to Spencer Hall’s cover of “One Shining Moment” a few too many times.

If you would like to read my long original monologue on March Madness and its specific sentimental connections, Click here. If you’d like to vote — and I don’t blame you if you do — or if you just don’t understand why the SNL Roundball Rock sketch hasn’t already been referenced, feel free to keep scrolling down.

Methodology:

Once again, I made a parenthesis in Excel. Then I found a bunch of sports themes. I thought I would find 64 (or 68) worthy participants. I do not have. So I narrowed the list down to 32, which is also much more conducive in terms of “writing presentations on largely wordless liminal space music”, which I also found difficult. In the list of 32, a certain set of automatic qualifiers, if you will, have been kept in order to maintain a wide range of representations, alongside some classics. If your favorite isn’t there, well, I’d say there still will be next year, but who knows what the theme will be then. If you have any suggestions, we are always open to those as well.

Schedule and installment:

Jake Grant

The winner will be determined via the sum of the polls integrated into the article and, new this year, the poll function on Twitter. Today’s article will feature the first eight matchups of the first round, with the next eight arriving later in the week on Friday. Next Wednesday sees the Sweet Sixteen followed by the Elite Eight next Friday. The Final Four of the bracket will take place on the Friday before the actual men’s Final Four, with the championship coinciding with the Monday of that game.

#1 March Madness theme (NCAA Basketball on CBS) vs. #32 NASCAR on NBC

#1: This theme not only fits its sport and context perfectly, but it is also the theme song for an entire month of the sports calendar. Most Americans, let alone American sports fans, probably know exactly what this song is within the first two beats. It is also the song of the phenomenon which gave birth to this beautiful format. Taking a cue from Jon Rothstein’s playbook, this theme is literally the month of March. A newer theme is used here, but through all of its iterations it has been superlative.

#32: This is an automatic qualifier (yes, these also exist in fake parentheses, I set the rules and both need 32 entries and want to have a diverse selection) that I never had heard before. The NASCAR theme is just happy to be invited.

#16 NBA on ESPN vs. #17 NFL Network Chimes

#16: This one is sort of a beta version of Roundball Rock, but still brings back solid implications of a big Friday or Sunday night basketball game, or perhaps the NBA Finals.

#17: Chimes rule. But that doesn’t get you far. After the initial build, this continues.

#8 Heavy Action (Monday Night Football) vs. #25 US Open on CBS

#8: Provides an ideal setting for football: it is strong, without being imposing or exaggerated. It is also a key indicator of a theme’s longevity when, much like Roundball Rock, the theme transcends its broadcaster, league or calendar period to earn its own name.

#25: I really tried to be modern and go with the ESPN tennis theme, but I just couldn’t do it. CBS kept calling me back.

Theme BCS #9 vs. NHL #24 on TSN

#9: Try hearing this without hearing the phrase “you’re watching live” popping into the back of your head. This cannot be done. The perfect musical setting for the nation’s sporting event most associated with a specific date, time and location, the Rose Bowl.

#24: It’s Canadian, huh! I suppose if we were from there it would resonate higher, but it’s still a solid pre-match number.

#4 SEC on CBS (NCAA Football on CBS) vs. #29 World Series of Poker

#4: CBS may not air most sports, but they’re certainly well-represented on this list. As much as the anti-SEC fan in me hates to admit it, this is the setting for the biggest game of the week, and unlike many big football themes, it manages to stay upbeat and exciting, rather than feeling very imposing. and laborious. There are probably a lot of misconceptions in the list: sport is fun! – but the catchy, catchy themes really get to me.

#29: This is a suggestion from the writers’ room that I’ve never heard. That said, it’s pretty catchy. That’s about all I have here. I wasn’t a fan of poker and I don’t imagine it will become my speed in the near future either.

#13 NHL on NBC vs. #20 The Thrill of Victory (Golf on CBS)

#13: I was surprised how far this one slipped down the list when I was trying to seed them. Honestly, I was thinking of just generating a random number for each of them and going from there, but here we are. With this one in particular, the Stanley Cup Playoffs, rather than the regular season, are strongly linked in the old memory box. Is it because the Blackhawks have been incredible for nine straight seasons? Yes yes it is. But the gravity and tension of this game transports us directly from the outside into the emotion of the game, which is exactly what a theme should do.

#20: I honestly didn’t know this wasn’t a spin-off of the CBS NFL theme until I wrote this. I also didn’t realize that CBS only used it for the Masters and had only been using it for a relatively short time. The more you know!

#5 ESPN College Football (pre-2014) vs. #28 College Football Playoff

I promise I didn’t do this on purpose. In fact, until a few soccer friends in the writers’ room insisted that I was underplaying the MLS theme, causing a reshuffling of the seeds, they were unmatched. That being said, this is by far the most intriguing match of the first round. I even had to change my presentations!

#5: This is a great fit for college football, whether in tone, instrumentation, memorability, or originality. The sound of the marching band and drums immediately evokes college football in particular, and the soaring, aspirational nature of the song lends both fun and excitement to the event at hand. It was hard not to rank it higher, but, even regardless of that, it is one of my personal favorites.

#28: This one suffers from the exact same problems as the NFL theme on FOX, namely that it’s extremely iconic, but also extremely overplayed and, to be frank, somewhat labored. It’s one thing to abandon the BCS theme for this when the CFP came along – I may not like it, but I get it – but the new age brought a boring, impersonal vampire who seems much more like a derived from the NFL and really lacks the fun and esotericism that defines the sport. And, yes, this is the toned down, less biased for the sake of the matchup version of this blurb.

#12 F1 Theme vs #21 Augusta

#12: If you’re unfamiliar with this one – like me – I IMPLOY you to listen to it before you vote. It takes a little while to get to the main part, and the faint car noises are a bit excessive, but throwing a choir into a theme, much like the Duel of the Fates in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, adds an intensity that you do not have. I don’t really know you’re missing something until you have it. Perhaps this is my preconception of F1 as a primarily European concept and that it is a very classic setting for live recording, but it also seems to fit the globalist and financial conception that I have sports.

#21: I’m not sure why ESPN felt the need to update this one as well, but it was sort of the little cousin of the much more iconic pre-2014 college football theme.

Who do you have? Who was snubbed? I can’t wait to see how this all plays out. We meet again on Friday for the second half of the round of 16.