Ah, now if only Dick Vitale would do the same....

...There's always Howard Cosell...

for me, there are two people guaranteed to get me two turn off the TV: bud collins and bill walton. bud collins never shuts up. its as if he were describing tennis for a radio audience. bill walton is just bad, bad, bad.

as the most despised announcers is that they are more concerned with looking smart than the game itself.

i don't doubt that either one of them have a deeper understanding of and love of their respective games (and i love both sports). but all that comes across in their announcing styles is the know-it-all see-i-told-you-so moments. this makes their silence after a gaffe all the more annoying.

walton, collins, vitale, these guys are a bit over the top, but they are over the top because they bubble with enthusiasm of what they are watching. the game comes before themselves.

now if they can just replace mccarver and buck with steve stone and just about anybody, we'll be in business.

I've been sick of Packer since 1990. I say good riddance to a mouthpiece who did little more than pander to the power conferences. I'll take Dickie V any day. He knows the game better, and is more in touch with the whole thing, especially the mid-majors. They're both bombastic, but Packer is mean, short-sighted, and has kept me away from watching the Final Four for the past decade.

I guess I've been watching Billy Packer for 40 years, since he used to do the "ACC Game of the Week" with his ex-coach Bones McKinney (and Billy had hair). My Mom the UNC alum would curse them both for being Wake Forest homers.

Sure he made mistakes, but he knew the game and had played in a final four himself. He wasn't bland like Nantz or a screaming nincompoop like Dick Vitale, raving about "diaper dandies".

I can't think of anyone I'd rather watch call a college game. But what do I know, I'm an ACC homer myself.

... but Gus Johnson needs to be involved in every final four for the next 30 years.

That was his big failing. At least half of the color people in college basketball provide more analysis than Packer ever did. Packer was the master of pointing out the obvious, while topping it off with absurd pronouncements like the one you mention about the UNC-Kansas NCAA final.

Though, FWIW, Clark Kellogg has never struck me as being much better. At least Bill Raftery talks like he enjoys the game.

More generally, TV sportscasting suffers from a real lack of feedback and/or accountability. It is rare that talent rises to the top, because a dinosaur like Packer can be granted the top spot in his profession for some obscure reason, and then he is treated for years and years as if he still deserves it.

And yes, baseball has the same problem with Tim McCarver.

See, you shouldn't go any farther than that. If he's a sharp analyst, that's all I need to know, and I want to hear him. Even though he got some calls wrong, as everyone will, Packer was indeed a sharp analyst, and that's why I'll miss him. All the complaints about him pretty much amount to a vote for style over substance. Are we expected to like Kellogg--who seems competent but not very insightful--better because he doesn't offend our sensibilities in the way that Packer supposedly does? How shallow is that?

Also, Packer's conviction that the tournament should include--and the rankings should favor--the best teams regardless of what conference they're in didn't leave him "out of touch with the people watching." Only with those people who only tune in to see the Cinderella stories.

Bill Walton, by the way, is the polar opposite of a sharp analyst, and that's why I never want to hear him again. He might be the least sharp sports announcer I've ever heard.

You're right to equate Packer with McCarver, though I think the latter has slipped the last decade or so (or maybe others have caught up and surpassed him) and fell too in love with his cringe-inducing literary/historical analogies, whereas I still think Packer was the best game analyst working college basketball -- though I like Bill Rafferty too, who unlike McCarver, makes the love and play of language work for him.

You mention Steve Stone as a replacement for McCarver. I'll all for it. But your suggestion is somewhat ironic in that Stone comes from the Billy Packer school of analysts. Guys who can often predict the result of a move before the result occurs.

Hey, we'll all get over Billy Packer in a heartbeat, and his pro-majors/anti-middies bullying on Selection Sunday was regrettable at best. But unlike a McCarver or a Vitale, he never made me wince when calling a game and his insights were vastly superior to "the big fella can't be stopped" jive we'll get from Clark Kellogg.

The man made me laugh, as did everyone doing an impression of "you call that defense". He once explained how a team was doomed by their lackadaisical play when the score was 4-2, no bullshit. Billy got fired for his comment that could have made a hundred thousand(a few million?) people stop watching a game that millions upon millions of advertising dollars went into, fairly simple and appropriate.

That it was Gus Johnson and whomever he wants replacing Packer and Nance. Truth be told, I'm glad Billy's going away. CBS must have three different teams that are better than the one they've had calling the Final Four.

I met Billy Packer at the 2003 Final Four, where he spoke to a breakfast group of about 25 special guests of CBS, and I have to say, King nailed it. Even in a small group, he was remarkably un-personable and of course was shilling for the ACC, which didn't even have a team there that year (it was Texas, Marquette, Kansas and Syracuse).

Later that day, my wife and I saw him at the WWII museum, and despite the throngs of people, many of whom undoubtedly were basketball fans, not a single one approached him.

Kellogg should prove an adequate replacement, but if CBS really wanted a great analyst, they'd bring in Bob Knight. The few games he's done, he has been superb. Despite his many, many flaws, the man knows the game like no one else, and he's got a quick wit and a biting, often hilarious sense of humor.