Stanford scored one of the weekend's biggest March Madness upsets by taking down mighty Kansas and earning itself a trip to the Sweet 16 on Sunday. The Cardinal dashed the hopes of Kansas phenomenon Andrew Wiggins, as well as Jayhawks supporters the world over.
But that may not be what the game is most remembered for. Late in the second half, CBS' broadcast cameras found one tearful young Kansas fan to zoom in on as all those dreams slowly evaporated. Then CBS focused in on him some more. And some more. And -- what the heck? -- some more for good measure.
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CBS then revisited the crying Kansas kid after a scoring flurry briefly gave the Jayhawks new hope; their young fan had dried his cheeks. Then, after Kansas lost, CBS showed the footage of him crying yet again. (You can see the initial extended shot embedded atop this post.)
Shots of sad young fans late in sports broadcasts have become common enough to border on being tedious for seasoned viewers. But the extra-long fixation on this particular small fan ticked off Twitter in a way that's far from usual.
Complaints and criticism came in from many sports media members:
I see we're not even waiting for the final buzzer to exploit crying children now.— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 23, 2014
Oh god they showed him crying again, this poor Kansas kid pic.twitter.com/Io0lVoNXFG— Mikey (@fsmikey) March 23, 2014
CBS currently scrambling a camera to follow that crying kid into the parking lot.— Michael Bruntz (@michaelbruntz) March 23, 2014
Hopefully Crying Kansas Kid at least gets a royalty check from CBS after all that airtime.— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 23, 2014
The hashtag #CryingKansasFan picked up some momentum. The phrase was mentioned nearly 5,000 times on Twitter on Sunday, according to Topsy, and many fans reported seeing #CryingKansasKid as a trending topic as the Kansas game wound down.
Meanwhile C.J. Fogler -- one of the sports Internet's go-to sources for instant viral GIF-making -- steered clear of the burgeoning meme:
Nope, leave the poor kid alone— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) March 23, 2014
It'll be out there, folks. I'm not going to do the poor fella like that— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) March 23, 2014
On the one hand, CBS' lingering shot was exploitative and the online backlash is well-earned. On the other hand, raw emotion like this is half the reason we obsess over sports in the first place -- and while this shot went on for a rather long time, showing a sad young fan wasn't otherwise very unusual.
We're curious about what you think, so give us your take in the poll below.
Did CBS cross the line by zooming on the young Kansas fan crying at his team's loss?