FanHouse Billy Packer

One of the biggest gripes against former CBS basketball analyst Billy Packer was that he didn't respect the mid-majors. He famously complained that there were too many mid-majors in the 2006 NCAA Tournament. That was the year that George Mason upset Michigan State, North Carolina and UConn to get to the Final Four.

This will be the first Packer-less tournament in decades as he retired after last year's Final Four. It's a shame for him because he would have loved the makeup of the brackets this time around. Going against the recent trends, it looks as if the major conferences will get most of the at-large bids, leaving the mid-majors out in the cold.

ESPN's college basketball analyst Dick Vitale was enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame this past September. According to CBS's Jim Nantz, broadcast partner Billy Packer deserved to be there first.

When it was put forth to Nantz that the opinion of his former partner among sports fans, blogs and radio types was, um, less-than-favorable, it clearly struck a nerve.

Packer is the "greatest friend college basketball has ever had," said Nantz, "He looked after the sport and made sure there was an honesty and an integrity to it."

Whoa! No offense but I cannot say "honesty" when thinking about Packer. Sure, he called it like he saw it but he never admitted when he saw it wrong. As for "integrity", does that mean making sexist comments to a couple of females at Duke or to continuously belittle mid-majors?

I'm not as down on Packer as most people since I grew up in ACC country listening to him call games. But there is a reason that it's taken this long to nominate him for enshrinement into the Hall.

With about 10 seconds remaining in the third quarter of the Alabama - Clemson "game" (if you can call it that) Brent Musberger said that, to paraphrase, the "good thing about this loss" is that the can still win the ACC Championship, which was their ultimate goal.

He and Kirk Herbstreit went on to debate whether or not that was a legitimate possibility, given the fact that Clemson has, up to this point, been getting freaking pummeled. And I'm sure that's a reasonable question, along with the the debate as to whether the ACC deserves to play football this year.

But the bigger issue I have is that Burger just pulled a Billy Packer and said that the game was over ... in the third quarter. And Clemson only down three scores. Personally, Packer's "over" statement in the Carolina - Kansas game didn't bother me outside the jinx possibilities of having the Tarheels come back, but it bothered a lot of sponsors.

So I'd at least like to see Brent, who is, like Billy, a ranting old school homer in the announcing booth each week, get some short of chastising for what equates to the exact same thing. I have to imagine that Chik-Fil-A, who coughed up a ton of money for this game, probably took notice. So, Brent, if you wake up and there's a giant tomahawk chopping cow staring in your Atlanta hotel room, you'll know why.

I've been trying to find the best way to "honor" Billy Packer by pointing out his most ... uh ... famous moments (ya know, saying there are too many mid-majors in the NCAA Tournament, saying "F** out" on the Charlie Rose Show, and saying the foul that broke Tyler Hansbrough's nose wasn't flagrant).

This cartoon above does it perfectly. It was created by Grey Blackwell, who does all sorts of cartoons for the News & Observer's web site, and hits on all three of those notes with high hilarity.

Many basketball fans of the world are set to rejoice. The Miami Herald is reporting that CBS is replacing Billy Packer with Clark Kellogg on the top college basketball broadcast team.

CBS believed the time was right for a change and that Kellogg deserved a chance to work with Jim Nantz on the lead team.

Packer, who had been going year to year with his contract, confirmed through a CBS official Sunday that he no longer will broadcast for the network but is pursuing other projects in basketball. Packer declined to comment further.

Packer has called every Final Four since 1975 and every NCAA Tournament championship game since 1977. However, he has been full of controversy for his "know-it-all" style of broadcasting and has been one of the most hated TV analysts in college basketball.

Despite all of that, college basketball won't be the same without Packer. Again, he always got the big games at CBS during the season and especially during the NCAA Tournament.

In related news, CBS is looking at ESPN's Greg Anthony to replace Kellogg as a studio analyst. Kellogg, one of the more knowledgeable assets the network has (albeit not one of the better broadcasters), moves from the studio to replace Packer as Jim Nantz' partner on college hoops. Anthony would team up with Greg Gumbel and Seth Davis in the studio.

Also at FanHouse:
Cartoon Looks at Packer's Career
Packer Doesn't Care How You Remember His Career

During Kansas's first-half massacring of North Carolina in the Final Four, Billy Packer famously screamed "It's Over!" seven and a half minutes before the break. As many times as I've wanted to throw something through the TV when Packer was holding court on something, this wasn't one of them. I said the exact same thing and thought Packer was just expressing his honest opinion on the game.

Which is what you usually ask commentators to do. What Packer usually does is spout off crankery, occasionally of the racist, sexist and/or homophobic variety, that makes it hard to believe he actually enjoys the game of basketball. All of that is fine with CBS, though, but saying a blowout game is over isn't, according to Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News.

CBS is paying $6 billion for the right to air the tourney over the life of its contract with the NCAA. From a business perspective, telling viewers to turn off the TV is not a great idea, especially in a soft advertising market.

Naming a "winner" with plenty of time left in a game does not sit well with corporations paying top dollar to advertise their products during the tournament. Some of these same companies will be asked to purchase time on next year's tourney.

That's darned close to getting Al Capone on tax evasion. All the truly bad things that a man did don't meet with any punishment whatsoever but once the almighty dollar gets involved, the ax comes down with a vengeance.

If you were watching Kansas take North Carolina behind the woodshed during the first half on Saturday night, you're surely familiar with this particular moment.

Despite Kansas's best efforts, Billy Packer avoided the ignominy of having such a bold prediction come back to haunt him. Michael Hiestand of USA Today spoke to him after the game to see if he regretted making a call that may have sent some viewers in search of other Saturday night entertainment instead of continuing to watch the game.

"My job is to say what I see, not have some kind of subconscious feelings about offending anybody," he says, adding that on-air partner Jim Nantz "grabbed my arm" after his game-over line. "It probably annoyed some people, but I don't concern myself with having some agenda that's contrary to what I'm seeing."

Besides, he says, "the integrity of the sport is more important than any promotion for television."

Other than the self-serving integrity business at the end, I agree with him. I said exactly the same thing when Brandon Rush's shot went down. North Carolina had given no reason to believe that they could make themselves a factor in the game's outcome and what Packer said reflected that with great clarity. And, for those of us who stuck with the game until the end, the comment added a compelling storyline to the ultimately futile comeback.

CBS Sports analyst Billy Packer will call his 100th Final Four game on Saturday, and you'd think all the preparation would keep him pretty busy. But he's not too busy to do something that I find downright creepy -- walk up to complete strangers, all female, and ask them if they'd vote for Hillary Clinton. That's exactly what Packer does, Michael Hiestand of USA Today reports:

He'll tell you that Hillary Clinton's support among women is overrated. He randomly approached 123 women recently - without introducing himself - to ask if they'd vote for her. "None of them knew who I was, or cared," he says. He was surprised only three women blew him off - "you'd think they'd say it was none of my business." (FYI: Only six said they'd vote for Clinton.)

Can you imagine that? You're a woman walking down the street and all of a sudden some old man comes up to you and demands to know whether you'll vote for Hillary Clinton? Do you think maybe you'd be a little taken aback, maybe even scared, and you'd just tell him what you think he wants to hear?

You may have seen Deadspin's media approval ratings, where blog readers pass judgment on on the members of the mainstream media. They're an opportunity for those who prefer to get their sports news and opinion in the blogosphere to have their say about those who provide the sports news and opinion on TV and in print.

And in a stroke of genius, Ballhype has taken those approval ratings and condensed them into one handy Media Approval Leaderboard. The Leaderboard is a great thumbnail of the way blog readers view the members of the mainstream sports media, and it was interesting to see who comes in dead last, with an approval rating of 10%: CBS college basketball analyst Billy Packer.

Why Packer? Deadspin commenter Signal to Noise summarized what many in the blogosphere think, and this is the portion of his comment I can reprint:

Packer commentates on a sport that I can only assume he hates, based on what he says during games.

Packer does, indeed, offer up a healthy dose of criticism and complaints during his college basketball commentary, and that's not the way to win popularity contests. Fortunately for Packer, he'll never know he's disliked online, because he doesn't own a computer.

CBS announcer Billy Packer is less than two weeks away from calling his 34th consecutive Final Four, an incredible streak of being the voice of the championship that may be unmatched in all of sports broadcasting.

Packer's partner, Jim Nantz, believes that such a long record of working at the game's highest level should yield Packer the highest of honors. From Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated:

"Can you imagine anybody calling 34 consecutive World Series or 34 consecutive Super Bowls?" said Nantz. "He is the voice of college basketball. He has done more to popularize the sport, promote the game, defend the game, and take care of the game than anyone. It's never about self-promotion, never about any popularity contest.

"I've sat back every year and I've watched Dick Vitale make the finals of the Hall of Fame voting," Nantz added. "I want to say right up front: I love Dick Vitale. I hope he gets in. But I'm curious as to why no one has ever raised a flag and said, Why isn't Billy Packer on the list of finalists? Why isn't he already in the Hall of Fame?"

The difference between Vitale and Packer, I think, is that Vitale's enthusiasm shows how much passion he has for the sport, while Packer often comes across as though he's complaining about it. In terms of Xs and Os analysis, Packer is better than Vitale, but Vitale's feel-good approach to the game is the kind of thing that gets rewarded by Hall of Fame voters.