GU looks for Vitale signs
Dick Vitale has never met a college basketball player, coach, fan or game he didn’t like.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the vociferous and immensely popular color analyst for ESPN would gush to the point of giddiness about making his first trip to Gonzaga University on Saturday to opine – quite loudly, no doubt – on the fifth-ranked Bulldogs’ non-conference game against Stanford in the sold-out McCarthey Athletic Center.
“I’ll tell you what, I’m really excited to get out to Spokane,” Vitale said during a phone interview Wednesday morning. “I love those kinds of environments, where the people in the stands are right on top of you.
“I know the Zags and their fans are going to go bananas, because College Game Day is there.”
Vitale, a former college and NBA coach, who has been doing television color commentary for the past 27 years, will be among the legion of ESPN personnel that will descend on the GU campus this week for the cable network’s two-session Saturday telecast of College Game Day, live from McCarthey, and the Cardinal-Bulldogs game that will follow.
GU students have been camping out near the 6,000-seat arena since Monday night to hold their places in line for front-row seats at the game – and to be a part of the hour-long morning edition of College Game Day, which will air live at 8 from a stage set up on the arena floor.
Vitale, who is scheduled to work the Pittsburgh-West Virginia game in Pittsburgh on Thursday night, said he expects to arrive in Spokane early Saturday morning, “sleep most of the day,” and then do the Stanford-GU game, which will serve as the nightcap for ESPN’s College Game Day tripleheader, with play-by-play announcer Brad Nessler.
“We’re really thrilled about it,” Vitale added, “because we got lots of great story lines – Gonzaga’s longest (home) winning streak in the nation, Stanford trying to get that big statement win over somebody who’s nationally ranked, and then you have Adam Morrison chasing national player of the year honors.
“It should be a lot fun.”
This will be Vitale’s second trip to Spokane, although he’s a little fuzzy about how long ago he made his first stop here.
“I was there for a banquet, a fund-raiser for the Boys and Girls Club, years ago and had loads of fun,” he recalled. “They’ve got beautiful people there, but I’ve never been to Gonzaga.”
Vitale joined ESPN during the 1979-80 college basketball season, shortly after the network’s September launch, and called the first NCAA game ESPN televised – a Dec. 5, 1979, matchup between Wisconsin and DePaul. He has done color commentary for more than 1,000 games since then, but still marvels at how far the network that issues his paycheck has come since its infancy.
“It’s amazing,” he said, looking back on that Wisconsin-DePaul telecast. “The only thing – when they put me away for good and lower that casket – they can’t take away from me is that I did the very first game in the history of ESPN’s major college basketball telecasts.
“We were operating out of a trailer in Bristol, Conn., at the time, and I mean an actual trailer. Today we have a college-like campus here with all kinds of studios, all kinds of administration building … I pinch myself every so often to make sure it’s all real.”
Back when ESPN first came on the air, Vitale still fancied himself as a basketball coach and expected to eventually return to his original profession.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that 27 years later I would still be doing television,” he said. “I always figured I was a coach, not a broadcaster. But I look at ESPN today and can’t believe how it has grown – into, probably, the No. 1 player in the world of spots.
“And to be a part of that; to be even a little spoke in that big wheel, makes me feel proud.”
When Vitale slips on his headset in the McCarthey Athletic Center on Saturday, he expects to see a Gonzaga team that richly deserves it lofty national ranking.
“I’m really looking forward to it, because I have great respect for what Mark Few has done with that program,” he said. “That program is big time in every way. The Zags have arrived, and I’ll tell you how I can tell.
“If I talk to John Calipari before they play Memphis, the first thing he’s going to want to talk about is his schedule. He going to say, ‘Dickie V, Dickie V, you know who we’re playing? Look at our schedule, man. We’re playing Gonzaga.’
“And as soon as you hear that, you know you’ve arrived.”
Vitale gave another example, saying he was having breakfast at a restaurant the day after Connecticut beat GU in the championship game of the Maui Invitation in late November.
“There were a couple of Connecticut fans who came over to my table for an autograph and said, ‘Dickie V, Dickie V, did you see who we beat last night? We beat Gonzaga for the championship!’ … “And I said to myself, ‘They have arrived big time, baby.’ When people are excited that they beat you, and excited that they even get to play you, those are sure signs that you have arrived.”