Dick Vitale's silver arches - Static - Brief Article

* Dick Vitale's silver arches: As college hoops starts to resembles McDonald's--over 99 billion games televised, 285 this season on ESPN Inc.--please note that this ubiquity and/or popularity parallels the Dickie V. Era. No bald-faced coincidence, that.

Happy silver-anniversary season to Vitale, 64, who's due another Hall of Fame induction as "contributor," if not "PTPer," for a TV career dating to December 1979. ("They called when the Pistons gave me the ziggy. I thought, 'ESPN? Sounds like a disease!'") Reference points: This was four years after Billy Packer's network debut, four months after John Madden's. One game, maybe two, got shown weekly. Analysts were vanilla, not spumoni.

His status as supersized icon is one of my and Vitale's favorite subjects: "Sure, I'm a loudmouth, a hot dog! Lots of people like hot dogs!" Attack his shtick, not his enthusiasm; the exclamation points are genuine.

"Next to my picture in my high school yearbook it says, 'Everybody's buddy'!" True to the 1958 East Rutherford High Tea Leaf, Richie Vitale doesn't rip. He praises incessantly; claims every assistant deserves a head coaching job, etc. Yet when cornered, he can be deadly honest. Ask Jim Harrick, who hasn't spoken to Vitale since their tense interview last spring.

Longevity? "I just bust my butt. No critic ever said I've come to a game unprepared. You don't last 25 seasons only saying, 'Awesome, baby!'"

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