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Tuesday, November 28, 2000
A new gig, thanks to Sir Charles
By Dick Vitale
Special to ESPN.com
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What a special, special weekend it was down in North Carolina. It was the annual Jimmy V. Foundation golf and tennis event which raises so much money for Cancer research.
As always, the annual black tie dinner and auction was quite an event. But, there were a couple of moments I wanted to share.
|  | | Charles Barkley broke out his checkbook to see Dick Vitale do the weather on Good Morning America. |
Jack Ford of Good Morning America got up and offered up an opportunity for the highest bidder to do the weather on the show. Charles Barkley, who has been a regular at the Jimmy V. for years, got up and said he would bid $25,000 if I would do the weather.
I said, "Come on, Charles. I will do it if you bid $50,000!"
Sure enough, Sir Charles got out his checkbook and you will see me on Good Morning America doing the weather in the near future. Hey, Al Roker and Willard Scott, watch out, baby! All those weathermen out there, maybe I will develop a new career!
I also won a bid to go backstage for the soap operas General Hospital and Port Charles. Imagine what will happen when they see me on the set!
The highlight of the night happened when I called on Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and new North Carolina coach Matt Doherty to come through big time. They put up tickets for the showdown at Cameron Indoor Stadium between the Tar Heels and the Blue Devils. That's right, the hottest ticket in college sports.
We put together a package which included tickets, admittance to our production meeting, passes to the closed practices, plus a mention on TV. A total of six tickets went up for auction. It was flat-out awesome with a capital "A".
One person put up, do you believe it, $100,000 for four tickets and the other perks. And another person won with a bid of $50,000 for the other two tickets and the package.
Wow, $150,000 for those goodies. What a special evening it was.
As always, the big winner was the Jimmy V. Foundation, which works so hard to help stamp out the dreaded disease which took the life of my buddy, Jimmy Valvano. If you want to make a contribution, call 1-800-4-JIMMYV.
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