College Basketball HOF Inductees Kinda Suck

Dick Vitale will be inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame on November 23 and Hell must have just started to freeze over. Its certainly not for his coaching as Dickie V was a college basketball coach for just 5 years from 1972-1977 at the University of Detroit before jumping to the Detroit Pistons in '78 and getting fired the next season. Granted during his 5 years at Detroit he sported a 78-30 record but he only made the NCAA tournament (then just 32 teams) once but that isn't enough to get him into the hall of fame. No, his "inspirational" televised buffoonery is what gets Dickie V in as a contributor to the game.

“I can’t run, can’t jump, can’t shoot and I’ve got a body by linguini,” Vitale said. “But I’ve been honored by those halls of fame for one reason: Enthusiasm.”

Enthusiasm that's what he calls it. Right.

Moving on, amazingly, Dickie V isnt the worst inductee into this year's class. That honor belongs to the incomparable Bill Raftery. Raftery is another announcer in the televised buffoonery vein with an even worse college head coaching record than Vitale. Raftery rocks a solid 154-141 career record as Seton Hall's head coach but unlike Vitale, he actually did play in college. That record certainly isn't what makes him an even worse selection to the college basketball hall of fame, it's really that his announcing sucks worse than Vitale somehow. Vitale occasionally makes sense even though he is usually wrong, Raftery never does.

Rounding out this stellar class are players Danny Manning, one of the greatest college players ever to have destroyed his knee 26 times in the NBA, Charles Barkley, no real argument there and the one of the few highlights of the class, and Arnie Ferrin, Utah's only four time All-American...which happened in the 1920s. Also joining them are coaches Nolan Richardson, who hasn't done anything since he played the race card smack out of college hoops and into coaching Panamanian and Mexican Olympic hopefuls, and Jim Phelan, who with 830 wins and 1321 games coached should have been in awhile ago.

Lets add this all up: 2 blowhard announcers, 1 coach who pissed off a state and can't get a job anywhere but South America, 1 player who peaked in college and might have set a pro record for knee surgeries, 1 player who has had over 80 years to get into the hall of fame and JUST got in, and 2 people who you can't say much about other than, its about time. Sounds like a good time. Charles, what do you think about being inducted into the hall of fame with this stellar class?

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram