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. the previous day, 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 the 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. The regal Mike Krzyzewski presides over the game at Duke, but he is disinclined to be the focal point.
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.
He’s awesome, baby
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 X’s 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., headed for his favorite breakfast joint, the Broken Egg.
“Let’s try to get Howie,” he said, punching a cell phone.
Howie Schwab is a coordinating producer in studio production for ESPN. He also is 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 convenience store to buy a pile of newspapers, Vitale decided to dictate a Web site 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.
Up, up and away
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 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 Web site 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 last 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.
Roots of his success
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 Pistons 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.”
Amazing staying power
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,” Bodenheimer said. “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. 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.
Keeps on ticking
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.
When he didn’t make the cut, suddenly he was the little boy with the bad eye again, the coach who got fired.
“I felt like this … this … zero,” Vitale said, wiping away tears.
He remains eligible and has influential backers. Smith, Krzyzewski and Rick Pitino were among those who wrote letters to the Hall of Fame supporting him.
“He’d never admit it,” said North Carolina coach Roy Williams, “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.”
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?
Said Vitale: “I’d run around saying, `Please, ask me for my autograph or to take a picture! I used to be Dickie V!'”
