Like a lot of us whose ages are at least a wee bit north of 40, Alabama basketball coach Mark Gottfried pretty much learned his college hoopsl from television analyst Billy Packer.

Or as Gottfried said during the Southeastern Conference's summer teleconference on Wednesday, “I think he's been a phenomenal asset to basketball. For most of us, our entire lives we've listened to him broadcast the Final Four. That will be different now.”

CBS made sure certain its 2009 NCAA Tournament coverage will be different than any America has watched the past 34 years when it ousted Packer earlier this week in favor of Clark Kellogg.

Much of the nation will no doubt rejoice over the change. Kellogg is quick, funny and just off-center enough to breathe some much-needed levity into Packer's longtime mannequin Jim Nantz.

This isn't to say Nantz should have followed Packer out the door. Instead, CBS might have been better served to move Kellogg alongside them.

It wouldn't have quite rivaled the trio that first brought Packer to fame when NBC teamed him with Dick Enberg and the late, great Al McGuire. But Kellogg could have sparred with Packer much as McGuire often did, with Enberg playing the peacemaker.

And that's the sad part of all this. Not that the 68-year-old Packer is out of the Final Four. But that he ultimately spent so little time with Enberg and McGuire.

You had to be there, of course. The game was different them. College hoops was just freeing itself from UCLA's dozen-year dynasty, which netted 10 NCAA championships between 1964 and 1975.

The sport had pretty much been a cottage industry up to that point, so much so that the title game wasn't moved to Monday night until 1973. But when Enberg, Packer and McGuire sat behind the microphones that Monday night in Salt Lake City in 1979, Larry Bird's Indiana State Sycamores fighting Magic Johnson's Michigan State Spartans for the national championship, everything changed.

The easy answer is Bird-Magic, of course, who similarly lifted the NBA. But if the championship game ratings have never topped 1979, college basketball took off in general much of it seemingly due to the Enberg-McGwire-Packer team.

They were like no other broadcast team before or since. Enberg the front man was wryly witty, terminally cheery and made you feel as comfortable as your sofa. McGuire was the coolest color guy ever, as tough to duplicate as jazz. And then there was Packer, the stodgy, earnest teacher determined to make sure the audience never forgot how important this game played by kids in short shorts (in those days) and hightops really was.

The dream trio didn't last long. CBS took over the NCAA Tournament from NBC in 1982. McGuire and Enberg stayed with NBC. Packer went with CBS, teaming for years with Brent Musburger before Musburger was fired in 1990.

In fact, CBS had apparently wanted to announce during this year's Final Four that Packer was stepping aside but the man many of viewed as Billy P-ACC-ker for his lifelong love of the Atlantic Coast Conference would have none of it. He didn't want his exit to overshadow the Final Four.

Admittedly, Packer was neither terribly likeable nor memorable. You may not love the shtick figure Dick Vitale — who'll be inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame this fall while Packer still waits — but while Vitale's “Get a TO, Baby!” and “He's a PTPer (prime time player)” have become as much a part of college basketball as the 3-point line, Packer leaves with nothing save his familiarity and his reputation as the know-it-all uncle who lost his smile at puberty.

But in a way that was his shtick. No nonsense. No personality. Just blunt basketball told from the perspective of a scrappy guard who once led Wake Forest to the 1962 Final Four.

Packer probably shouldn't have told last spring's Final Four audience that the Kansas-North Carolina game was “over” midway through the first half when KU led 38-12. A guy as smart as Packer should have known that comment wouldn't have pleased his CBS bosses, who certainly didn't want viewers to turn off an event they paid more than one billion dollars to televise.

But as Auburn coach Jeff Lebo said Wednesday, “One thing with Billy, he says what he thinks. That got some people riled up.”

If saying what you think isn't always lovable, it's certainly laudable. And after 34 years as the face of the Final Four, Packer certainly deserves to be lauded with a spot in the Hall of Fame as much as his antithesis Vitale.

E-mail Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com

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