Is Billy Packer in Trouble at CBS?

During Kansas's first-half massacring of North Carolina in the Final Four, Billy Packer famously screamed "It's Over!" seven and a half minutes before the break. As many times as I've wanted to throw something through the TV when Packer was holding court on something, this wasn't one of them. I said the exact same thing and thought Packer was just expressing his honest opinion on the game.

Which is what you usually ask commentators to do. What Packer usually does is spout off crankery, occasionally of the racist, sexist and/or homophobic variety, that makes it hard to believe he actually enjoys the game of basketball. All of that is fine with CBS, though, but saying a blowout game is over isn't, according to Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News.

CBS is paying $6 billion for the right to air the tourney over the life of its contract with the NCAA. From a business perspective, telling viewers to turn off the TV is not a great idea, especially in a soft advertising market.

Naming a "winner" with plenty of time left in a game does not sit well with corporations paying top dollar to advertise their products during the tournament. Some of these same companies will be asked to purchase time on next year's tourney.

That's darned close to getting Al Capone on tax evasion. All the truly bad things that a man did don't meet with any punishment whatsoever but once the almighty dollar gets involved, the ax comes down with a vengeance.

Oh happy day, right? Who cares what the reason so long as we don't have to put up with Packer any longer, right? Wrong. It's hard to believe I'm typing this but if Packer walks the plank for this, he's getting a raw deal.

It's high irony, or highrony if you prefer. Packer blows the call of Memphis failing to foul on Kansas's game-tying possession on Monday night, years of trash get defended by the network beyond the reasonable expectation for any public figure and then a rare, accurate assessment of a game gets rewarded with a pink slip. The last thing we need is more announcers who lie to us about the things we see right in front of our eyes.

(H/T SportsbyBrooks)