Dick Vitale is ‘full speed ahead’ to call games this college basketball season

After a number of health-related setbacks have kept Dick Vitale limited in his appearances behind the microphone in recent years, the beloved ESPN college basketball commentator is “full speed ahead” as the season prepares to tip off next week, according to a report in the East County Observer , a local newspaper based in Lakewood Ranch, where Vitale lives. Vitale is currently undergoing his fifth cancer treatment in six years , this time for melanoma that he was diagnosed with earlier this year.