Oh happy day!

You all get a bonus today because I stumbled on a story I just had to comment on after I finished my first post: Packer out at CBS.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it on this blog or not, but I can't stand Billy Packer. Perhaps he was different back when he started calling the Final Four, but till I came around and really started paying attention, it just consistently boggled my mind that this was the man who had occupied the highest job in college basketball broadcasting for 34 straight years. There are high profile analysts out there that I don't particularly like, but I at least get what they bring to the table. Dick Vitale is a classic example - I don't really like him on-air (though I greatly appreciate his genuine enthusiasm for the game, and the incredible things he does outside the game itself), but I get what he brings to the table as an analyst - he's capable of being entertaining, if not particularly eloquent or overly insightful. And generally, you're going to find that most anyone who occupies a chair on a noteworthy broadcasting crew has at least one of those three qualities, if not all 3.

Packer, at least in his present state, has never brought any of those things to the table from my perspective. When I read "Last Dance", Packer was (obviously) featured rather prominently, as he's been one of the more enduring figures around the Final Four, and there was a lot of praise of his ability to break down games and so forth. I just haven't seen it recently. Most of the time, what I find him doing is picking up on a couple of pieces of analysis, and then repeating them ad nausem throughout the game. The most egregious example of this from my perspective was in the 2006 title game between Florida and Ohio State. Packer repeatedly informed us just how tired OSU's Greg Oden was, and repeatedly lambasted Florida coach Billy Donovan (whose team basically led by around 10 for the entire game) because he wasn't doubling Oden on defense. Then there was this year's Final Four, where Packer declared the semi-final game between UNC and Kansas "over" with about 7 minutes to go in the first half. Now, it really looked that way (I think Kansas was up by about 25-30) and Kansas did win (but not before UNC had cut it all the way to 4 in the second half), but that's just something an analyst needs to be saying. Packer's continued inclusion on the #1 CBS team has been particularly difficult to swallow in recent years given that his partner Jim Nantz is, in my opinion, an absolutely brilliant play-by-play man who deserves better than to have to babysit Packer in the booth.

To be honest, I don't know how I feel about Packer's replacement, Clark Kellogg. He's never been my favorite analyst in the studio. However, I'm very glad to see that the cord has finally been cut on Packer, and now won't have the matter of "tradition" clouding the issue when they are evaluating who belongs in the chair next to Nantz every year on that first weekend in April.