MILWAUKEE — Where do we start? Well I started with young Vince 25 plus years ago. Not at TMJ4, but at WFRV in Green Bay.
"Something from the archives, illustrating Vince Vitrano's own self-made offense called the V-Bone, offense," Vince's high school friend Andy Gallion said. "In a camp. A football camp. A fake football camp, that he put together with a brochure and everything."
And things have never totally thawed out from there.
At Super Bowl 45, Vince and I endured weather in the teens colder than Milwaukee.
"The weather here's been really crummy. I mean c'mon we're in Texas!" Vitrano said back then. "We had, look, I mean look. This whole platform where we are is covered in ice. They don't have any salt out here. They don't melt any of the ice. I mean. It's gonna be, you know it's bad when you say, boy I'm so glad it's just freezing rain."
"Where is your winter coat and hat? We told you it's going to be cold!" Brian Gotter said.
At last summer's Ryder Cup? Heaven, at Whistling Straits. Of course, who can forget Lawn Wars, and my victory in such.
I asked, being an official, when a team is handed the sectional championship plaque or a gold ball, that makes them the winner correct?
"That is true, yes," Gallion said.
So since I have a trophy two years running, that makes me the Lawn Wars champ. Correct? Gallion said yes.
Gallion went to Tosa East and has the dirt from his and Vince's football days.
"He had this thing, where if he ever scored a touchdown? He would take the entire team to Old Country Buffet," Gallion said. "And you know, I don't think he played fullback very often. But he was in, in a game. But our quarterback audibled to a dive play from the one-yard line so that we could get Vinny in the end zone and then everybody would get Old Country Buffet. And he scored and he delivered on the promise."
But thank goodness his version of the Red Raiders offense never came to be.
