• E-mail this page
• |  Print this page
• | 
• | 
• | 

Show Me Some Class, Babyyyyyy

I will normally turn down the sound on a game involving the vocal assault rifle of Dick Vitale. It's just my taste, which doesn't tend toward an unnatural love affair with Mike Krzyzewski or the barracks sadist Bobby Knight ("Robert Montgomery Knight"). But I appreciate what Vitale brings to college basketball.

However, at a recent luncheon in New York, the silky smooth Jim Nantz took the stage to point out that this year Billy Packer would be announcing his 100th Final Four game on Saturday night -- a remarkable accomplishment. That's more than 30 years of games! Some would argue that this is more than enough.

Packer does tend toward being cranky at times (and he is a self-admitted technology Luddite, to boot), but his comments are insightful and typically spot on; for instance, he told me more than a week before the tournament started that Davidson would be extremely dangerous. They were, missing the Final Four by a single shot. He also said that he would pick Kansas and North Carolina as a matchup at the end; indeed, they play each other this Saturday night.

What Packer does, Nantz told his hostage crowd, is not become the spectacle. Instead, Packer humbly does his job and lets the game speak for itself. That is a rarity. I have no idea, for instance, what it is Bill Raftery says to Vern Lundquist right at the tip off in his juiced-up, gravelly staccato. I'll give Lundquist this lovely line during Xavier's win over West Virginia after one player fouled out: "He's the second Musketeer to foul out. One more and you could write a novel." But I have no idea why Lundquist this past Saturday night marveled that "love is in the air" regarding UCLA big man Kevin Love. And it is beyond me why Gus Johnson calls everyone over 220 pounds "rugged," as he did about half the Davidson big men.

Packer is his own man to a fault, but frankly I'd mirror his brackets if given the chance; lord knows he'd never fill them out online.

« Your Next Fav.or.it Blog Aggregation Tool? | Main | A Little Small-Mindedness »