Vitale's Column on the Honor
LIVE Broadcast

DETROIT (6/10/13) -- Former University of Detroit Mercy men's head basketball coach Dick Vitale - an ESPN broadcaster for over three decades – will be inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association (NSSA) Hall of Fame tonight (Monday, June 10). A live webstream of the 54th Annual NSSA Awards Banquet will be available, beginning at 7:30 ET.

Among those to be honored on Monday are Hall of fame inductees Vitale and Mitch Albom; National Sportscaster of the Year Dan Patrick; National Sportswriter of the Year Peter King; 102 state sportscasters and sportswriters of the year; Big House Gaines Award winners Tommy Amaker (Harvard) and James Stinson (Livingstone); Jim Nantz Collegiate Sportscaster of the Year Ross Lippman; Bob Costas High School Sportscaster of the Year Carter Woodiel; Bob Ryan High School Sportswriter of the Year Yoni Monat. Longtime NSSA foundation board member Karl Hales will serve as emcee. The induction will be part of the 54th annual National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Awards weekend in Salisbury, N.C.
 
This will be the 12th Hall of Fame induction for Vitale.

Vitale's college head coaching career began at Detroit in 1973-74, and he spent four years at the Titans' helm, rolling up a 78-30 career record. His 1977 squad set the school record with 25 victories, and advanced to the NCAA Tournament, where it scored a first-round victory over Middle Tennessee State.

Vitale went on to coach the Detroit Pistons before beginning his broadcasting career with ESPN in 1979. As its top college basketball analyst and ambassador, he helped make the network an integral part of the game's popularity. An author of nine books chronicling his love affair with basketball, Vitale received the Basketball Hall of Fame's Curt Gowdy electronic media award (1988), the NABC Cliff Wells Appreciation Award in 2000, before receiving the sport's ultimate honor when he was selected as an inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008 (after being named a finalist in 2004, 2006 and 2007) as a contributor.

Vitale called ESPN's first-ever NCAA basketball game – Wisconsin at DePaul on Dec. 5, 1979 (a 90-77 DePaul win).  Since then, he's called close to a thousand games, including NBA contests for ESPN during the 1983 and '84 seasons.