UPDATED: Quick-Post: Dickie V on campus yesterday

UPDATE (7/12/11 11:30am): Mr Vitale has a blog post up about his visit.  Check it out here.  Calls his trip the "time of his life."  Thanks to Buffnik at Allbuffs for spotting it!

I have a love/hate perspective on almost every ESPN personality.  I'd love the attention, but I hate the schtick.

This is why I was very conflicted yesterday when the tweets came pouring in that ESPN's very own king of schtick Dickie V was touring Boulder with friend and CU assistant basketball coach Tom Abatemarco.

Coach Abatemarco (left) took Dickie V (right) through the new practice facility yesterday.  Yes, it was, *sigh*, "awesome, baby."  From: @DickieV

Dick Vitale can be a very prescient analyst.  When he's calm, and talking in his serious voice, he can be extremly informative and knowledgeable.  But there's the other side, the "Dukie-V" side when the schtick kicks in, that annoys me to no end.  Look, I totally get it, he's built a million-dollar brand on "It's Awesome Baby," Hooters, and all of the other huckster crap, so he might as well stick with it, but when he throws his hands in the air and starts screaming at me I turn the channel.  Unfortunately for those of us seeking considered discourse on college basketball, he's seemingly in "Dukie-V" mode 90% of the time he's on the air.

However, I was totally excited that he chose to spend some time touring both CU and the basketball program.  In a practical mindset, it's easy to see how a few hours in Boulder could translate into a few precious minutes of national conversation next spring.  Maybe he's doing some Duke game next February, the game gets out of hand, and he launches into some form of "What about those Colorado Buffaloes; THEY'RE AWESOME BABY!"  It's simple things like brief mentions from the top guys that help improve a programs national profile, which in turn helps recruiting, scheduling, and, ultimately, performance.  More of this, please.

Call me a hypocrite, and considering how harshly I commented on him last year "hypocrite" may be too soft of a word, but I loved that he was here yesterday.  Hell, he had more than 10 tweets about us yesterday, many of them with pictures.

This is why it helps to have national-level basketball lifers like Coach Abatemarco tied into the program.  They give us inroads to national profile guys, who in turn love up the program.  We've done it in the recent past with special-assistant-to-athletic-director-Mike-Bohn-Tom-McGrath, and I hope it continues.  It's always nice to hear some Buff love, even in the offseason.