The Nov. 25 marquee college basketball game at Allen Fieldhouse did not disappoint.

Kansas and MSU battled closely to the finish line, and the Jayhawks pulled out a narrow victory, despite a gritty and determined effort by coach Tom Izzo and company.

As I have been observing for years, Dick Vitale's abysmal attempt to break down a college basketball game failed utterly once again. As my eyes followed an intriguing matchup on the television screen featuring turnover woes, surpassingly strong rebounding efforts and critical turning points in momentum, my ears heard an entirely different tune.

I heard endless jabbering about Danny Manning, Alex Rodriguez and the Green Monster at Fenway Park. I heard about how great Nick Collison was, and how he was so important for the state of college basketball.

Only once or twice throughout the entire course of the game did I actually hear Vitale do his job and talk about the actual game going on right in front of his eyes. I have a problem with this. A serious problem.

Vitale is a wonderful mascot for college basketball today, but he is a terrible, terrible color analyst. In fact, I wonder if he knows anything about the X's and O's of basketball - I wonder if he's capable of talking about the game at a microlevel, such as CBS greats Bill Raftery and Billy Packer do.

Message to Vitale: If you do the games, talk about the games. You are excruciatingly annoying to listen to otherwise.

Arthur Tanimoto
advertising senior