For a brief period of time, both commentators worked the NCAA Tournament for their respective networks.
They were two men with outsized loves for the game of college basketball who helped the sport grow from a regional curiosity to the national juggernaut it became in the cable-television era.
Dick Vitale and Billy Packer worked for two different networks—Vitale for ESPN, Packer for NBC and CBS—and took two different approaches in conveying their enthusiasm for hoops. But they were...