Billy Packer

Scott McKinney, who hosts a sports-radio program syndicated across the deep South, recalls a few years ago when Billy Packer started offering analysis of college basketball teams on the show. "A fan would call in and say 'I'm an Auburn fan, what do you think about the Tigers?' And Billy would just say, 'You guys are a nonfactor,' " McKinney says. "We'd get calls in the office the next morning from irate fans, saying 'What are you going to do about Billy Packer? He said this about my team in the first hour, and this other thing in the second hour, and something even worse in the third hour.

Temple coach John Chaney criticized CBS analyst Billy Packer for saying "there was no place" for the long stare Chaney put on referee John Clougherty in last Sunday's game against Georgetown. Packer was quoted in Wednesday's editions of USA Today as saying that the tactic could backfire on Chaney because Clougherty could end up doing one of the Final Four games. Chaney, who spent an entire timeout glaring at the veteran Atlantic Coast Conference official, said yesterday that Packer had overstepped his bounds.

The sparring between CBS basketball analyst Billy Packer and St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli may not be done. Sean McManus, president of CBS sports, said yesterday that he would like Packer to interview Martelli this weekend during the network's NCAA tournament coverage. "Billy doing a live two-way interview with Coach Martelli is an element we would like to have," McManus told the New York Daily News. "Viewers would like to see it. It would be a lot of fun. " On Sunday's NCAA selection show, Packer said the Hawks did not deserve a No. 1 seed in the tournament, provoking an angry response from Martelli.

CBS announced yesterday that Clark Kellogg would replace Billy Packer after 27 years as the television network's lead college basketball analyst. Including his earlier years at NBC, Packer had worked at every Final Four since 1975, an unparalleled run for a national sports championship. Kellogg, a CBS game and studio analyst for 16 years, will work with Jim Nantz on the 2009 Final Four broadcasts. Packer had angered St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli with his comments about the Hawks during their magical run to the Elite Eight in the 2004 NCAA tournament, when they received a No. 1 seed.

It's March madness, and Phil Martelli is mad. The St. Joseph's basketball coach, whose Hawks will meet Liberty University in a first-round NCAA Tournament game today, seethed on the air last Sunday when CBS lead analyst Billy Packer dissed the Hawks for being awarded a number-one seed (along with Kentucky, Duke and Stanford). Packer publicly and adamantly stated that St. Joe's couldn't beat Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Texas, Oklahoma State, and a handful of other teams who were seeded below them.

It will be easy finding area basketball fans as March Madness begins Thursday. They'll either be at NCAA Tournament games involving area teams, or in front of their television sets. Drexel-Memphis leads off the schedule for area fans at approximately 5 p.m. on Channel 3 with a first-round West Regional game from Albuquerque, N.M. Tim Brando will do play by play with Derrek Dickey as the analyst. Channel 3 is scheduled to carry the Connecticut-Colgate Southeast Regional game at 12:15 p.m., followed by the Massachusetts-Central Florida East Regional game from Providence, R.I., until Drexel-Memphis begins.

GROWING UP IN the northern outskirts of ACC country, I saw and heard Billy Packer when he was at his absolute best. He played the game, coached the game, knew the game and could explain the game. If you loved college basketball back then, you loved listening to Packer. Doing those regional ACC games, he told you stuff you did not know in a way that made you understand it, appreciate it and savor it. Somewhere along the way, Packer forgot all that he once was and morphed into a condescending, patronizing, big-conference shill who was so out of touch by the end, nearly every broadcast was more about something that happened 40 years ago than what was happening on the court in front of him. It crystallized for me on an Amtrak ride to New York on March 7, 1994, with a Penn team on its way to play Columbia, one more win from closing out the second of what would become three consecutive unbeaten Ivy seasons.

CBS college basketball analyst Billy Packer said he wasn't being insensitive or homophobic when he made a comment while being interviewed Friday from Atlanta on The Charlie Rose Show, which airs on PBS. At the end of the interview, Rose, who was in New York, asked Packer whether he needed a runner for the Final Four. "Because I could jump on a plane and could be there," Rose said. To that Packer responded, "You always fag out on that one for me, you know. You always say, oh, yes, I'm going to be the runner, then you never show up. " Audio and video clips of that interview have been appearing on Internet sites.

Everyone who follows college basketball knows that Billy Packer's first sporting love is college hoops. Rarely does Packer resist an opportunity to jab the pros. The latest left- right by the respected CBS analyst occurred yesterday during a conference call focusing on the opening of the college season on CBS on Saturday. North Carolina, led by Simon Gratz High graduate Rasheed Wallace, plays Texas at 4 p.m. on Channel 10. The subject was former Michigan teammates Chris Webber and Juwan Howard playing their first game for the Washington Bullets against Boston last Saturday without a practice.

In the spirit of the political season, Billy Packer was saying what this country needs is someone to direct our Olympic basketball effort. Someone, Packer said, like Jack Ramsay. "It's imperative that the position of international director of basketball be established," Packer said yesterday during a conference call to announce Jim Nantz as Brent Musburger's successor as the No. 1 CBS-TV play-by-play man on the network's college basketball telecasts. Packer, who will work with Nantz, was responding to a question about who should coach the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team in 1992.

For the next three weeks, tens of thousands of chanting, panting and occasionally ranting Eagles fans will swarm here, to the NFL team's training camp at the green foot of South Mountain. In other places, the arrival of so many rabid out-of-towners might be viewed as a hostile invasion. But in Bethlehem, a city founded by a placid Protestant sect and named for the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, they are welcomed. "We love it when the Eagles are in camp and all their fans are here," said Jack Smith, a Lehigh history professor.

BETHLEHEM - For the next three weeks, tens of thousands of chanting, panting and occasionally ranting Eagles fans will swarm here, to the NFL team's training camp at the green foot of South Mountain. In other places, the arrival of so many rabid out-of-towners might be viewed as a hostile invasion. But in Bethlehem, a city founded by a placid Protestant sect and named for the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, they are welcomed. "We love it when the Eagles are in camp and all their fans are here," said Jack Smith, a Lehigh history professor.

CBS announced yesterday that Clark Kellogg would replace Billy Packer after 27 years as the television network's lead college basketball analyst. Including his earlier years at NBC, Packer had worked at every Final Four since 1975, an unparalleled run for a national sports championship. Kellogg, a CBS game and studio analyst for 16 years, will work with Jim Nantz on the 2009 Final Four broadcasts. Packer had angered St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli with his comments about the Hawks during their magical run to the Elite Eight in the 2004 NCAA tournament, when they received a No. 1 seed.

GROWING UP IN the northern outskirts of ACC country, I saw and heard Billy Packer when he was at his absolute best. He played the game, coached the game, knew the game and could explain the game. If you loved college basketball back then, you loved listening to Packer. Doing those regional ACC games, he told you stuff you did not know in a way that made you understand it, appreciate it and savor it. Somewhere along the way, Packer forgot all that he once was and morphed into a condescending, patronizing, big-conference shill who was so out of touch by the end, nearly every broadcast was more about something that happened 40 years ago than what was happening on the court in front of him. It crystallized for me on an Amtrak ride to New York on March 7, 1994, with a Penn team on its way to play Columbia, one more win from closing out the second of what would become three consecutive unbeaten Ivy seasons.

CBS college basketball analyst Billy Packer said he wasn't being insensitive or homophobic when he made a comment while being interviewed Friday from Atlanta on The Charlie Rose Show, which airs on PBS. At the end of the interview, Rose, who was in New York, asked Packer whether he needed a runner for the Final Four. "Because I could jump on a plane and could be there," Rose said. To that Packer responded, "You always fag out on that one for me, you know. You always say, oh, yes, I'm going to be the runner, then you never show up. " Audio and video clips of that interview have been appearing on Internet sites.

Sports Media Notes There are many who feel that Georgetown is lucky to be in this weekend's college basketball men's Final Four after Jeff Green's game-winning field goal with 2.5 seconds left in last Friday's 66-65 win over Vanderbilt. Don't count CBS analyst Billy Packer among that group. While most analysts, including CBS's Clark Kellogg , who was watching from the studio, said that Green traveled before putting up the shot, Packer insists that the no-call was the right one. "I would stand behind the guys who were at the game and saw it and defer to three refs who saw it, and not one had an indication it was traveling," Packer said earlier this week on a conference call.

On Friday afternoon, with NCAA at-large tournament spots up for grabs, Drexel increasingly looked as if it was in decent position to grab one. "Yeah, I guess so. But these things can turn in a minute," Drexel coach Bruiser Flint said late that afternoon. "There's still a ways to go. " He had that right. Friday night was not a great one for Drexel's hopes. Xavier's loss to Rhode Island was good for the Atlantic Ten. It means two bids for the A-10: one for Xavier, one for the tournament champion.

Scott McKinney, who hosts a sports-radio program syndicated across the deep South, recalls a few years ago when Billy Packer started offering analysis of college basketball teams on the show. "A fan would call in and say 'I'm an Auburn fan, what do you think about the Tigers?' And Billy would just say, 'You guys are a nonfactor,' " McKinney says. "We'd get calls in the office the next morning from irate fans, saying 'What are you going to do about Billy Packer? He said this about my team in the first hour, and this other thing in the second hour, and something even worse in the third hour.

Loquacious, gregarious and seemingly incapable of filtering his opinions before offering them, Phil Martelli knows what makes for good copy, bless his heart. He knows what makes provocative grist for television and for sports-talk radio. Anyone who has checked out the sports sections or clicked on a TV or radio the last three months or so has probably gotten that impression. So when the St. Joseph's coach learned late Sunday night that Billy Packer was going to be the color analyst for the Hawks' big game against Wake Forest on Thursday night in East Rutherford, N.J., Martelli couldn't help but appreciate the potential drama.

As the thrilling NCAA tourney game neared its conclusion on Saturday, Kenneth C. Herbst could no longer contain himself. "I got so excited, I stood up and started doing defensive slides," the assistant professor of food marketing at St. Joseph's said yesterday, his voice still crackling with enthusiasm. "I'm sitting there yelling at the TV, sweating it out. " When the game ended, Herbst felt a deep sense of pride and joy. His school had won and advanced to the Sweet 16. His school is Wake Forest.