Fans will be back in the stands for the first time since the NCAA tournament started in March of 2022. The 2020 tourney was canceled and the 2021 tourney took place in a bubble. I would like to propose that Dick Vitale and Gus Johnson call some games in the 2023 Men's Tournament.
Vitale announced this week that he was shutting it down for the rest of the season because he needed more rest and would need surgery after being diagnosed with a vocal cord disorder. Vitale has undergone multiple surgeries to remove melanoma, had been diagnosed with lymphoma, and needed to step away to rest over the last year.
Vitale wrote that he was encouraged by the progress despite not appearing on the show for the rest of the season. I hope that the added rest will help it heal more, and that things will look better when I go for my next visit. We will set a date for surgery once the inflammation heals.
My throat is moving in the right direction, and Dr. Z is optimistic that it can be successfully treated to have me strong for the 2022-23 season.
The first call of the season was made by the Hall of Famer when he worked the UCLA/Gonzaga game. It was a very emotional night.
Since Vitale has been a sportscaster for all of his career, he has never had the chance to call a March Madness game on TV. It's time for the networks to give Dickie V a chance to work some of the tournament games on CBS because of his positive outlook of returning next season. To create the most exciting duo to ever call a college basketball game, Vitale would need a play-by-play man to partner with.
In case you missed it, no one did March Madness like Gus Johnson. There is a soundboard for his calls.
Johnson hasn't called an NCAA tournament game in over a decade because he left CBS for FOX in 2011. He gets to call a few games for FOX. That isn't good enough. Vitale and Johnson need to call the tournament. I'm not the only one who thinks the networks should make similar deals. The Athletic's media reporter Richard Deitsch has been calling for years for a way to pair Vitale with Charles Barkley.
Back in 2016, ESPN and Turner found a way to make sure that Craig Sager worked an NBA Finals game, as it was the one thing he’d never done since his network didn’t have the rights to the NBA’s season finale. A few months later, Sager passed away from cancer — the same disease that Vitale has battled. And if that isn’t a reason for CBS, ESPN, and FOX to figure something out to get the voice of college basketball on the screen of the sport’s biggest event, then I don’t know what is.
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