ESPN’s Dick Vitale and others continue targeting Arizona Basketball, for what?

Nothing to see here, same stuff different day. But if you are Dick Vitale, it’s an excuse to try to incite the Arizona Basketball fans to push the school to punish their coach.

The Media must be out of things to write about, they seem to have all decided that emails written and call records not brought up in the FBI whistleblower trial are newsworthy. Dick Vitale can’t help himself.

When will it ever end you ask? It seems no time soon. After Dick Vitale apologized to Wildcats fans for making a bunch of assumptions, he is back retweeting Arizona Media continuing to ask for punishment for Sean Miller. ESPN’s teammate Jay Bilas also posting out links to ESPN articles that stoke the fire about a scheduled meeting with the ABOR (Arizona Board of Regents).

Greg Hansen from AZ Daily Star had come out swinging reporting early on after Mark Schlabach’s initial erroneous report asking for Miller’s and Ayton’s head. He has since apologized for jumping the gun. Since then Wildcats fans have not been kind to Hansen on Twitter and we have seen less reporting on Arizona Sports from him.

This week, Bruce Pascoe from the same paper, reported on the paperwork that was released from the first FBI Investigation trial in which an Adidas executive James Gatto and an aspiring Agent Christian Dawkins and one other were found guilty of all charges. The charges mentioned in the trial were specifically for Kansas, Louisville and NC State. Not Arizona. But Arizona was included in the plethora of evidence as the defense attorney was not granted permission to enter it as evidence.

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Pascoe asked Miller in the Western New Mexico postgame press conference if the “cloud” over the program with the trial (that his paper and ESPN is adding to), has affected the team or is causing issues this season. I have high respect for Pascoe’s integrity and I know he has bosses who probably instruct him to do these things and it is a reporters job, but they create a story then ask if the story is causing issues with the team? The irony.

In those papers were phone call records which included calls to Miller and at least one more Pac-12 coach, Oregon’s Dana Altman. Several Pac-12 coaches had mentioned a year ago at Pac-12 Media Day that his program was clean and programs with coaches that weren’t should be punished. Add Oregon to Arizona and USC on a list of programs which have come up at some point.

After the Oregonian reported about phone records linking Altman to Christian Dawkins, Dick Vitale did not retweet it or mention Altman and Oregon. Wildcats fans pointed the hypocrisy out to him immediately.

And then Vitale did the unmentionable, he put Lute Olson’s name in his mouth and Tweeted this:

What is he talking about? There was a regularly scheduled meeting, per Sean Miller, with the ABOR and the University of Arizona brass, and that meeting was taken out of context by ESPN and like every Tucson Media outlet.

ABOR wants to make sure they are kept up to speed on any evidence they need to be aware of by “aggressively pursuing the facts.” As they should. The headline out of ESPN was misleading in our opinion, “Arizona regents chair: Board never said Sean Miller’s job is safe.” Is anyone’s job safe? Oh my! So he is the coach of the team, nothing has changed, no new information or facts have been discovered.

Vitale cannot help himself. Any time he sees a post by AZ Central he makes sure he retweets it and goats Wildcats fans. Here are some Tweets with fans making some great points.

Last week, we got on with Vitale when he was live on Twitter. He was busy bragging about Bobby Hurley and the fantastic job Hurley was doing at ASU. He was gushing. Then he saw ZZ had joined the conversation and acknowledged us by commenting on our fans. His contention is that we should all rise up against Sean Miller and beg our President and AD to punish/fire the coach and admit wrongdoing.

Duke isn’t doing that. Kansas isn’t doing that. Oregon isn’t. Michigan State isn’t. USC, nope! And Vitale is not asking for their fans to rise up. So why should Arizona? It’s unreal.

Vitale then said something about Tweeting about Kansas to placate ZZ. But it was a soft nudge, “These happenings will hang over Kansas until ⁦NCAA⁩ steps in & renders an evaluation / that will not be for a long time,” he Tweeted. See? He’s saying even though there was evidence presented in court for Kansas, it will take a long time for Kansas to get punished, if at all. But doesn’t mention Self and doesn’t call for punishment. This is in stark contrast where he has called for Arizona Basketball and Miller to be punished many times.

Check out this thread started by ESPN reporter Evan Schreiber who seems to have taken over from Schlabach on Twitter. The Schlabach article covers multiple schools like Louisville, but he is highlighting Arizona in a series of Tweets. He says “listen” but you will listen to a bunch of guys but not Miller, yet they are targeting Arizona.

Why is ESPN so hellbent on attacking one program? We really wish the Tucson Media would tackle this story instead of bringing up salacious evidence not admissible in court. The text they use while Tweeting out their garbage posts is misleading and inflammatory. Why drag the coach and players through the mud if the documents don’t prove anything but that emails were written and phone calls were made?

ESPN should put an end to this and stop their “analyst” Vitale. Many Wildcats fans are calling for his retirement or firing, but the saga continues. Meanwhile, Wildcats fans continue to celebrate the fabulous five-star recruiting class Miller has begun to put together for next season.