Billy Packer
From Dickipedia - A Wiki of Dicks
Though beginning as a talented and respected broadcaster, Packer quickly developed crazy-old-man-sports-announcer syndrome, a condition that has been documented in many professionals since the advent of broadcast media. This case is particularly unique in that it developed almost immediately, rather than in Packer’s autumn years, at time when announcers are most susceptible to such abrasive curmudgeonry.
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Collegiate basketball
Packer attended Wake Forrest University (alma mater of dicks such as Sen. Jesse Helms and that kid who played Stuart Minkus on Boy Meets World) where he played on the basketball team, leading them to two league championships and a Final Four appearance.
After graduation, he began a career as a television sports announcer. Packer has covered every single NCAA tournament since 1974, though, for some of those years, he was not crazy and annoying, but was simply an irritating know-it-all.
Distinguished career in broadcasting
Not a racist
In a 1996 Georgetown-Villanova game, Packer used a unique term to describe star Georgetown guard and prison-tattoo look-a-like Allen Iverson. He said Iverson was a "tough monkey," a nickname that was surprisingly taken by many viewers as a racial slur…somehow. Many critics lambasted Packer, forcing sports fans to suffer through an egregious overutilization of the occupational pun, "color commentator."
Georgetown coach John Thompson attempted to clear Packer's name later by saying that he doesn't "have to explain to anybody about Billy being a racist because he's not." Among public figures, this is code for: "Whoops! He's a racist. But trying to bail him out will help me earn points with other old white people."
Or a sexist
While covering a Duke game in 2000, some female students working security, poorly versed in their “cantankerous old sportscaster” knowledge, asked Packer to show his press pass. Packer was overheard saying, "Since when do we let women control who gets into a men's basketball game? Why don't you go find a women's game to let people into?"
A Duke newspaper called attention to the remarks and decried them as sexist. Not called to attention was the improbability that enough people would actually attend a "women's game" that would necessitate a security staff to "let people into" it. This is just one of many instances where Packer spoke both insensitively and without any factual basis.
Or insensitive to homosexuals
On the Charlie Rose show prior to the 2007 NCAA final, Rose offered to be a runner for Packer and the broadcast team. Packer declined, citing the fact that Charlie Rose always "fags out" on him. Packer, in a statement, said that he didn't see what the big problem was because the alternate definition of fag is "to tire or weary by labor; exhaust." Packer, a well-known academic and scholar of the English language and its many intricate facets, was nonetheless persecuted by the gay community for the remark.
Because nobody cared about the comment except for the gay media, Packer could have easily apologized and resolved the matter. But, because his life's work involves being unreasonable at all times, he refused to apologize and went on to say: "I can assure you I will use that phrase again and I won't think twice about it."
Some have pointed out that there is an inherent irony here in that Billy Packer's last name is already an abbreviated homosexual slur.
Mid-major bias
St. Joseph's
In 2004, Packer got into an argument with St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli when Packer questioned St. Joe's #1 seeding in the tournament. St. Joe's barely missed the Final Four on a buzzer shot.
Packer, a man with a tradition for eating his shoe, similarly criticized the 1979 Indiana State team, which went on to play in the championship game and featured the clearly overrated Larry Bird.
2006 mid-major shoe eating
In 2006, Packer, then truly blossoming into a full cranky-old-incontinent-dick, took exception to the NCAA selection committee's decision to invite a large number of teams from mid-major conferences to the tournament.
Mid-major teams all over the country, best described as teams from small conferences who play 4 little white guys who can shoot the three and a tall exchange student, were offended by his comments.
Packer's irrelevance to the sport was proven that year when 2 mid-major teams made it to the sweet sixteen and another, George Mason, made it to the final four.
Other nuggets of dickitude
In March 2007 during an ACC game, UNC star Tyler Hansbrough was elbowed in the face by Duke's Gerald Henderson in such a flagrant manner that he was ejected from the game. Packer, in typical himself fashion, did not even wait to see a replay before he declared it unintentional. Then, when CBS showed replay after gratuitous replay of Hansbrough's nose being broken, Packer's delightful pairing of stubbornness and condescension forced him to defend his hasty, asinine argument over and over again.
The author of Why We Win and Hoops: Confessions of a College Basketball Analyst, Packer has made it possible for fans to have all the things they enjoy about the sport ruined in a convenient portable format. It is worth mentioning that, in the aforementioned publication, one of Packer's confessions is not that he is aware that he is a dick.
Packer has openly admitted that he is not even a fan of sports. Some fans have openly admitted the same of him.
A quiet, but longstanding feud has existed between Packer and Dick Vitale. Vitale, notably a Dick and not a "dick,” holds a high place among average sports fans thanks to his exuberance for the game of college basketball, a level of exuberance so high that it often renders his speech completely unintelligible. This is in stark contrast to Packer who has no record of even smiling while at a game.
Place in history
While many argue that the only remarkable thing about Packer's broadcasting career is that it is still going on, there is a case to be made that he has an important role in the sport's history. He is the only broadcaster in the history of the sport who is such a dick that every single fan has been able, at one time or another, to correctly point out that Packer hates their team.
