The misleading reports about Dick Vitale and Duke-UNC assignments

There has been a lot of media attention on the fact that ESPN did not assign Dick Vitale to this week's UNC-Duke game. Several reports have claimed that Vitale has called every UNC-Duke game that has ever aired on the network, giving the impression that he has never failed to receive that assignment. At best, these reports are very misleading.

First of all, the implication that Vitale's employer has assigned him to every available UNC-Duke game since 1979 is simply wrong. In 1993, ABC (which used some ESPN announcers including Vitale) televised Duke-UNC on March 7 and assigned Brent Musburger and Jim Valvano to the game.



That same afternoon, ABC assigned Vitale to the Kentucky-Florida matchup with Roger Twibell.



The same thing happened on 3/8/1992 when ABC used Musburger and Valvano on UNC-Duke and sent Twibell and Vitale to Missouri-Kansas. So for two consecutive years, Vitale was assigned to another game while his network was televising the famed ACC rivalry on the same day.

For completeness, the January 18, 1986 Duke-UNC game was on ESPN but did not include Vitale as ESPN picked up the ACC Raycom production and delivered it nationally (announcers were Marty Brennaman and Billy Cunningham).

Also, Vitale did not call the quarterfinal game between these schools in the 2002 ACC Tournament. Brad Daugherty was the analyst that evening on ESPN2 while Vitale called the afternoon session that day.