By JOHN P. WISEOne Great Season
I'm usually the last idiot to jump on the trade-this-player, fire-that-coach or these-announcers-suck bandwagons. I'm a pretty patient fella and I'm not always looking to pull a quick and critical trigger like many on the blogosphere.
For example, I'm the only person I know who used to say stuff like, "Nah, Dick Vitale's alright. Sure he can overdo it, but he's great for the game. College basketball doesn't have enough people like him." I'm not necessarily a huge fan, but I've never had a problem with his shtick.
Until now.
Among the many criticisms of Vitale, one of the most repeated is his reluctance to ever utter a critical word about a college basketball coach. Actually, it's worse than that. His undying love for almost every coach in the business can be nauseating, especially when at least a couple of handfuls of them are liars and cheaters.
But USA Today for some reason asked Vitale to write a guest column in Thursday's paper. In addition to a general season preview, he broke down a projected Sweet 16. Reading that part was what clinched it for me: His act is officially more tiresome than Chris Berman's.
Vitale offered up a quick, two- or three-line summary for each of his top 16 teams. Every single one of them mentioned the name of the team's coach, and 10 of the summaries began with the coach's name.
I'm pretty sure this isn't the end of the world, but with the many hours of Vitale expected to be on my TV the next few months, I'd rather not have to search for the mute button when I'm just reading the newspaper.