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Dick Vitale fires back at Geno Auriemma

By Will Osgood

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The indelible college basketball ambassador, Dick Vitale, fired back at UConn women’s coach Geno Auriemma for calling the men’s game “a joke”. 

UConn Huskies women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma, on a conference call Wednesday answered a question about the state of the men’s game by calling it “a joke”.

Noted college basketball ambassador/apologist and commenatator Dick Vitale didn’t take Auriemma’s words too kindly.

It seems we–Vitale, Auriemma or other analysts and fans–can debate for hours on end the merits of one-and-one basketball, as well as the stronger emphasis modern coaches place on defense, while seeming to eschew the intricacies of offensive spacing and shooting.

Vitale, himself, was once a college coach–doing so with great vigor and success at the University of Detroit-Mercy. He, like Auriemma, is in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

In other words, this isn’t a debate among chumps, nor a debate between one legend and one chump. It is a debate between two men with unique passion for the game of basketball on the whole.

Vitale fortunately mentioned that he respects and admires the UConn women’s coach. But those were all the niceties he displayed in his Twitter response to Auriemma.

Though it’s not exactly what he said, it seems that Vitale was essentially saying that calling the men’s game “a joke” is in itself “a joke”.

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Some are not fond of Vitale and his obnoxious broadcasting style that he’s put on display for decades on end for ESPN. He, of course, has been the leading analyst for men’s basketball for the network for almost the entirety of broadcasting career.

That post has gained him great notoriety and really led to a brand. Vitale is annually used in March Madness advertising campaigns and his opinions on the tournament aired internationally, despite ESPN not providing game broadcasts for the NCAA Tournament.

Yet the former coach seems to have become a product of the media hype train he works, and to an extent has become. He misses the context for what Auriemma said.

The UConn coach simply was stating a fact, when saying that teams no longer put the ball in the basket. That is undeniably a fact, as the men’s game produced its lowest points per game average nationally in the shot clock era.

Whether that makes it “a joke” is certainly up for debate. Vitale, with his all-out passion for the game could never succumb to such a notion. But he could, or should, recognize that Auriemma’s point was not so much that it’s a joke, rather that it’s not as well played as it once was.

And Vitale, watching as many college games as he does, should be able to agree with that assessment.

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