Vitale Has Become the Voice of a Sport - NCAA

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Vitale Has Become the Voice of a Sport

Often-imitated college basketball commentator is as exuberant
and genuine off-camera as he is on TV.

By Robyn Norwood, Times Staff Writer

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The moment arrived sometime before 2 a.m., aboard a private jet
carrying an ESPN crew from Durham, N.C., to Bloomington, Ind.

For the first time since before 9 a.m., Dick Vitale fell silent.

He had fallen asleep.

College basketball season arrives quietly, with this tournament
and that. But Vitale is its town crier, jolting you from the
couch with his trademark bursts. "Wow! I'm all excited! Coach K
and Tommy Izzo! Unbelievable! Two of the great programs in college
hoops!

"It's been a Hostess special! Cupcake City! They've blown away
opposition, but now it's chemistry time! You get a true evaluation!
This is not Phys Ed, baby! It's Chemistry 101!"

He is adored by players otherwise too cool to care, imitated more
widely than any sportscaster since Howard Cosell, and muted by
many a fan who would rather not be that wide awake.

But after more than 25 years and 1,000 games, Vitale has become
the face of college basketball.

It is in part because others have abdicated. Which player would
you recognize on the street, the way people once knew Ralph
Sampson or Patrick Ewing?

"You don't develop the household names, because as soon as they're
good, they're gone [to the NBA]," Vitale said.

The coaching giants are not what they once were either.

Dean Smith — "Michelangelo!" to Vitale — and John Thompson
have retired. Bob Knight — "The General! Robert Montgomery
Knight!" — is in semi-exile at Texas Tech.

Mike Krzyzewski, the greatest coach of his generation, presides
over the game at Duke, but he is disinclined to be the focal
point and prefers not to go out with his good friend Vitale in
public.

"He's going to get mobbed," Krzyzewski said.

Imagine: A coach who has won three national championships and
was Kobe Bryant's choice to coach the Lakers, playing second
fiddle to Vitale.

Vitale's hold on people — particularly young people — is
extraordinary.

The reason? Because he is the exact opposite of what he appears.

"He's completely genuine," said Dan Shulman, one of his ESPN
broadcast partners.

His shtick made him famous — phrases such as "diaper dandy" and
"awesome, baby!" and "gotta get a TO!" — but his relationships
with players and coaches, his ability to cut to the essence of Xs
and O's and his exuberance have made it last.

"Anybody who thinks he's putting on an act is crazy," Krzyzewski
said. "He does get that excited. He's speaking from his heart. He
puts it out there. He's not afraid of saying something that might
be controversial. He's usually right."

On the morning he would broadcast a 9 p.m. game at Duke, Vitale
was tooling down a highway in Sarasota, Fla., in a Mercedes
convertible, headed for his favorite breakfast joint, the Broken
Egg.

"Let's try to get Howie," he said, punching a cellphone.

Howie Schwab is a coordinating producer in studio production for
ESPN. He is also Vitale's lifeline. Vitale calls him at home at
night to get the scores. He calls in the morning to find out when
he is on "SportsCenter," to discuss statistics, to shoot the
breeze. "The record has got to be, oh, 10, 12 times in one day,"
Schwab said. "But Dick is great. He has an amazing memory. Dick
will ask me a question, and I'll answer it and think he's not
listening … and two seconds later, he recites it line and verse."

In the midst of his conversation with Schwab, just before pulling
into a 7-Eleven to buy a pile of newspapers, Vitale decided to
dictate a website column.

His volume went up about four notches, and he was off:

"The Jimmy V Classic is always such a special evening! I tell you,
what a dynamic doubleheader at Madison Square Garden! But the
biggest winners of all are the cancer patients who benefit from
the dollars raised to fight this dreaded disease!"

Minutes later, he had finished dissecting two games, analyzing the
players and strategies.

"So just clean that up a little bit, Howie. That's basically it,"
he said.

At the Broken Egg, Vitale made his way to his accustomed table.
The universal celebrity uniform — ball cap, dark glasses —
suddenly came off. The navy ESPN sweatshirt blared his identity.
And when he was approached for the first autograph, Vitale
whipped out a pen.

"I keep a Sharpie, just in case," he said.

Vitale tried to order breakfast, and a new employee had trouble.
"Egg Beaters, double spinach?" he said, before a waitress leaned
in to help.

"Just put down the Dickie V omelet," she said.

Nine hours before game time, Vitale finally left on a private
jet, a perk of his success. Vitale works 60 or so games a year,
and ESPN pays for first-class commercial fare. Vitale pays the
difference with money from speaking engagements.

"The only work in my work is the travel," he said. "The games
are play. I can't begin to tell you how much it means to have
the extra half-day at home with my family."

Vitale lives with Lorraine, his wife of 34 years, in a $4-million,
nearly 13,000-square-foot home in Lakewood Ranch, Fla. Their
daughters — both former Notre Dame tennis players who later
earned MBAs — live nearby with their families but are often
at the house. In Vitale's office, there is a large-screen TV
below two smaller screens. The home theater has leather seats
with cup-holders and velvet walls.

In the master bedroom, a TV rises at the foot of the bed at the
touch of a button. And as he shaves, Vitale can touch the alarm-
system screen in the bathroom and bring up ESPN.

But it is not entirely the house that ESPN built.

Vitale commands up to $45,000 a speech, has written seven books
— "Seven more than I've read!" — and has a website where fans
can buy autographed caps, balls, bobblehead dolls, even an alarm
clock that will wake you to the sound of Vitale shouting his
signature phrases.

He also uses his appeal for charity, particularly the V Foundation
for Cancer Research, pledging $50,000 this year as he seeks to raise
$1 million among 20 friends in memory of his friend Jim Valvano, the
late coach and analyst. Vitale also is such a benefactor of the Boys
and Girls Clubs of Sarasota that there is a statue of him outside a
new facility.

Some of his gestures are more personal. Dave Woloshin, a University
of Memphis broadcaster who barely knew Vitale, saw him at a game in
Springfield, Mass., the night before Woloshin had to broadcast a
football game in Tampa, Fla.

Woloshin asked Vitale for directions to John F. Kennedy Airport.

"Why don't you fly home with me and stay at my house?" Vitale replied.

They arrived at 3:30 a.m., and Vitale offered a tour.

"We go into the bedroom, but we don't turn on all the lights because
his wife is sleeping, and he's saying, 'This is my closet,' " Woloshin
said. "I never met his wife, but I was probably 20 feet from her."

Something about his absence of guile seems to draw people to Vitale.

In Bloomington, before Indiana played North Carolina, Hoosier guard
Bracey Wright made a beeline when he saw him. "Dickie V!" he said.

Talking off-camera with Indiana Coach Mike Davis, Vitale got an answer
without asking a question.

"There are [Bob] Knight lovers and Knight haters, but you have never
felt accepted here," Vitale said.

"The only time I felt accepted was the Final Four," Davis said.

Later, a crowd of students surrounded Vitale as he wrapped up
a broadcast. But instead of shoving and mugging to try to get
on TV, they raised camera phones to try to beam a shot of
Dickie V to their friends.

In a way, Vitale owes his career, the home, the Lexus and
Mercedes with vanity plates reading "ESPN 79" and "T-O BABY"
to two people.

One is Detroit Piston owner Bill Davidson, who ended Vitale's
coaching career in 1979 after Vitale had lost 60 of 94 games.
The other was the late Scotty Connal, the ESPN executive who
hired him.

"I saw Bill Davidson at an All-Star game, and he said, 'You
owe it all to me,' " Vitale said. "And I said, 'Yeah, thanks
for giving me the ziggy!' "

Until then, Vitale was the same "hot coach" he often glorifies.

As a Rutgers assistant, he recruited Phil Sellers, the star of
a Final Four team in 1976. By then, Vitale was already head
coach at the University of Detroit, which reached the Sweet 16
in 1977.

It all came apart in the NBA.

"I didn't fit. I was too emotional," Vitale said. "I always
felt like a failure.

"You go to church on Sunday, and I felt like the people around me
picked up the paper that morning and knew whether I failed or
succeeded. It tore my insides up."

He meant that literally. More than once during his coaching career,
he suffered from a bleeding ulcer.

"If I were coaching, I never would have lived past 50," he said.

Connal saw Vitale speak as a college coach and vowed to hire him
for TV one day.

"He said, 'You connect,' " Vitale said. "Whether people agree or
disagree, only a handful of people have that ability to hit buttons."

A nervous-looking Vitale was paid $350 to work a DePaul-Wisconsin
game in 1979, ESPN's first college basketball broadcast, opening
with an information-packed monologue as his partner stood by.

"ESPN changed my life," Vitale said. "It really did."

If there is a common criticism, other than his style, it is
that Vitale is too much the coaches' buddy.

But his interview with Jim Harrick in 2003, when Harrick was
besieged by accusations of NCAA rules violations and academic
fraud at Georgia, was tough and persistent. Vitale's follow-up
questions prompted Harrick to reiterate his claims, and ESPN
quickly received calls from UCLA and Rhode Island, contradicting
Harrick's graduation-rate numbers.

"It wasn't something I anticipated turning out as it did,"
Harrick said. "I went to his daughter's wedding. Both daughters.
We were good friends. I haven't really talked to him since."

The most remarkable thing about Vitale is that somehow the shtick
never wore out, and office politics never turned against him.

Maybe it is because he pays attention to everyone. Consider that
George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN Inc. and ABC Sports, started
at the bottom at ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Conn.

"I guess my first year there, I in effect became his driver. I
would pick him up at the airport. He'd buy all the papers, and
fire through them looking for any reference to himself, then
throw them in the back seat," Bodenheimer said with a laugh. "It
was my job to keep the car clean, so I was always picking them up.

"We became friends. We talked a lot about careers and jobs. He
really helped create March Madness, when ESPN started televising
the early rounds of the tournament."

The world knows him as Dickie V, but Vitale's parents, second-
generation Italian Americans, called him Rich, as his wife, Lorraine,
does. Before he was 3, Richie injured an eye in an accident involving
a pencil.

"When I lost my eye, my mother told me, 'St. Jude is the miracle
worker. Carry this card with you, Richie, all the time,' " Vitale
said. "I lost an eye, and my mother said, 'Don't feel sorry for
yourself.' "

His wife says his eye injury is part of why Vitale developed
the big personality, becoming the boy whose high school
yearbook photo was captioned, "Everybody's buddy."

And inside his pocket, there is always a St. Jude card.

At 65, in the first year of a five-year contract, Vitale has
no plan to quit.

Last season, he became a finalist for the Naismith Memorial
Basketball Hall of Fame, crying on the air when he learned
he was among the nominees.

"Oh, God, to see my name there," he said.

Neither Vitale nor Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun — who won
his second national title the day of the announcement — made
the cut.

Because the announcement is made Monday at the Final Four
and future inductees must be flown in, the nominees learn
the outcome Friday.

"Guys had been telling me, 'You're a lock,' " Vitale said.
"Bobby Knight said, 'I know you'll be in.' Krzyzewski, Digger
Phelps. I get choked up just thinking about it.

"I was at the San Antonio zoo with my family when I got the
call. We're watching the elephants, and I get a call from John
Doleva at the Basketball Hall of Fame, and he tells me, 'I'm
sorry to tell you, you weren't inducted.'

"My wife and kids can tell just by looking at me. You're not
supposed to tell anybody until Monday, and everywhere I go,
people are saying, 'Congratulations, Dick, you're going to get
in.' "

Suddenly, he was the little boy with the bad eye again, the
coach who got fired. All those well-wishers, and he couldn't
tell them he didn't make it.

"I felt like this … this … zero," Vitale said, wiping away
tears.

He remains eligible, and would be inducted if he received 18
votes from the 24-person honors committee.

But unlike some other sports halls, the Basketball Hall of
Fame doesn't have a media wing. Until Chick Hearn was enshrined
in 2003, no media member had ever been inducted.

Vitale has influential backers. Smith, Krzyzewski and Rick
Pitino were among those who wrote letters to the Hall of Fame
supporting him.

"As a contributor to the game, he deserves to be in," Krzyzewski
said. "He basically has been probably the game's biggest promoter
in the last decade."

"He deserves it," North Carolina Coach Roy Williams said. "You
know, he always jokes, 'I was fired, I've got no hair, one bad
eye.' He'd never admit it, but I think it would make him feel
more a part of the game.' "

Actually, Vitale does admit it.

"I mean, enshrinement," he said. "Your kids and grandkids
could go there forever.

"People say I'll ultimately get in. Who knows? The bottom line
is, you want to be living. I wish Chick Hearn got in while he
was living so he could have had the moment."

Moments are precious to Vitale. Mention that maybe someday he
will get through a day without being asked to sign anything,
and Vitale seems crestfallen. What fun would that be?

"I'd run around saying, 'Please, ask me for my autograph or to
take a picture! I used to be Dickie V!' " he said.





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