Pack your bags, Billy

There’s not much that can ruin a college basketball game, no matter who is playing or what the outcome is, especially during March Madness. But each and every year, there is one thing – a man actually – who ruins everyone’s viewing experience: Billy Packer.
For fans like me, today couldn’t be better. The sun is shining, there are no clouds in the sky and Billy Packer was finally removed from his position at CBS as main college basketball analyst. 

It’s not polite to celebrate when someone loses their job, especially in dire economic times, but I’m guessing millions breathed a sigh of relief when they heard this news. Watching games called by Packer required either one of three things from the viewer: an unorthodox amount of patience, a bottle of over-the-counter pain reliever or hefty amounts of alcohol.

During his 34 straight years of calling the Final Four, Packer was never embraced by anyone. Most announcers with that type of tenure are, at their worst, at least universally respected. Fans don’t necessarily like old stalwarts like John Madden, but we understand what he’s accomplished. But Packer always rubbed fans the wrong way. There are probably three generations of college basketball diehards that have wanted to pop Packer at least once.

A majority of the anti-Packer rhetoric spawned from his undying love for any Atlantic Coast Conference team, the conference Packer happened to play in during his time as a guard with Wake Forest in the 1960s. Announcers tend to have some bias towards major programs like Duke, North Carolina or Kentucky, but Packer’s frothing at the mouth for even ACC bottom feeders like Florida State was just too much.

No stranger to controversy, he’s been attacked in recent years by more than just angry fans starting petitions online. His outbursts stemmed from his apparent hate for the mid-major schools (schools not quite as big as the Big Ten, but not quite Division II) making it to the NCAA tournament, but luckily his dumb comments ended up being terribly wrong. In 2004, he bashed Saint Joseph’s because he didn’t think a small school deserved a number-one seed. The team went on to make it to the Elite Eight.
Then just two years later, he hammered the selection committee for selecting too many mid-majors which he didn’t believe could win against his favored powers. That year, two mid-majors, Bradley and Wichita State, made the Sweet 16, and one, George Mason, made it all the way to the Final Four. 

And finally, this past year during the Final Four, he claimed that “this game is over” when North Carolina (an ACC school) was up 38-12 to Kansas with a lot of time to go in the first half. Who were the National Champs again? The Kansas Jayhawks. 

Whether he was fired for sending too many fans away with his call in the UNC-KU game this year or just because he was too rough around the edges, not many college basketball fans are going to be sad to see Billy Packer go. He might have known a lot about the X’s and O’s, but he’ll never get any hugs and kisses from fans.