Around this time of year, more people start to become interested in college basketball, a sport that caters to a niche audience until around the NCAA Tournament.
So casual fans watching tonight’s Big East tournament semifinals on FS1 and tomorrow night’s finals on Fox might be surprised and feeling a little nostalgic. At several points during the broadcast, producers will play the iconic “Roundball Rock” theme, made famous in the 1990s during NBC’s coverage of NBA games.
The song, which veteran musician and media personality John Tesh compound in 1990, remains memorable even today. He was parody in recent years on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and carried out on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” But after NBC lost its NBA program in 2002, the song disappeared from sports broadcasts except during 2008 Olympic basketball games. In December, Fox executives brought the song back for its basketball broadcasts. -college ball, causing confusion among viewers.
“When this first happened, some people were tweeting and saying, ‘No, you can’t use that.’ It’s my NBA basketball theme,” Tesh said.
Tesh said some current Fox executives worked at NBC and liked the theme. So they decided to acquire the rights and use them for college basketball coverage from the Big East, Big Ten and other conferences. Tesh receives royalties every time the song is played on television, but he declined to say how much he earned or details of the contract with Fox. He said ESPN in 2002 that he made “in the six figures” every year that “Roundball Rock” was shown on NBC.
To Tesh, the revitalization of “Roundball Rock” for college basketball seems fitting. After all, he got his start in broadcasting while filming basketball games as a student at North Carolina State in the early 1970s, when the Wolfpack was a national power . Tesh would sell the tapes to Charlotte television affiliates, providing him with much-needed spending money.
“It kept me afloat,” Tesh said.
Tesh, who played lacrosse and football in college, ended up suspended from school for forging a statistics professor’s signature after refusing to allow Tesh to drop the class. Tesh said he spent the next six months living in a tent in a park in Raleigh, North Carolina, pumping gas and doing construction work before getting a radio job from beginner level at a local resort.
Tesh moved to television soon after and became an anchor and reporter for stations in Raleigh, Orlando, Florida, Nashville, Tennessee and New York.
In 1982, while working for the local CBS affiliate in New York, Tesh received a call from CBS Sports executive producer Terry O’Neil, who asked Tesh to join the network. Over the next few years, Tesh hosted some sporting events for CBS and also wrote music for the NFL, golf, tennis and other television shows. It was a natural fit for Tesh, a trained pianist since childhood who turned down a few music scholarships out of high school because his father didn’t want him to pursue a career in music.
In the late 1980s, Tesh was working as a co-host on “Entertainment Tonight” when NBC hired him to cover the Tour de France. During the run, he discovered that NBC had acquired the rights to NBA games and had musicians submit ideas for a theme song. Tesh didn’t have a tape recorder with him in France, so he called his answering machine in New York and sang the chords to what would become “Roundball Rock.” When he returned home, he revamped the theme, sent it to an editor who added a few touches, compiled NBA highlights and submitted the finished product on a VHS tape so producers could see what ‘he would like it if he appeared on television.
“I tried to eliminate as much doubt as possible by going all the way,” Tesh said. “And it worked.”
When NBC televised its first NBA game in 1990, Tesh remembers sitting in a sports bar on a work trip. He was excited to hear the song on television and looked around to gauge the reaction.
“They were very excited to watch basketball on TV, but who cares what the theme is?” Tesh said. “It was so disappointing. I thought someone was going to come and give me an award or something, but that didn’t happen.
Over the years, the reaction has changed, as people associate “Roundball Rock” with some classic games from the 1990s featuring Michael Jordan and other stars.
“It’s almost like when you hear your favorite old rock song today, it takes you back to that time,” Tesh said.
Tesh said he knew the song struck a chord when “Saturday Night Live” did a skit on it in 2013. Comedian Jason Sudeikis wore the same vest and haircut as Tesh during a concert PBS special from 1997. Tesh did not see the sketch when it aired, but he received several emails from friends wondering if it offended him.
“I’m like, ‘What planet are you on?'” Tesh said. “It was the coolest thing that ever happened to me. They canonized him.
Today, Tesh performs “Roundball Rock” at each of his 30 to 35 annual concerts. He also hosts a daily radio show on nearly 300 stations across the country. He is preparing for another PBS special which will also be filmed on April 25. And he’s working on a memoir that HarperCollins is expected to publish later this year.
Tesh, who turns 67 in July, has no plans to slow down anytime soon.
“I go on stage and there are 8,000 people in the audience,” he said. “I just smile and think, ‘How did that happen?’ I never took it for granted.
