The Press Box - Nora Princiotti on the NFL, Damar Hamlin, and Tom Brady. Plus: Jason Gay Toasts Billy Packer.

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Bryan is joined by Nora Princiotti, a few weeks before from the Super Bowl, to unpack NFL playoff media topics, ranging from Colts owner Jim Irsay potentially hiring Jeff Saturday, to Tom Brady thanking beat writers after his last game of the season (1:55). Then, ‘Wall Street Journal’ columnist Jason Gay joins to remember the legendary sports announcer Billy Packer and how his career transformed college basketball (33:18). Host: Bryan Curtis Guests: Nora Princiotti and Jason Gay Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Chris Vernon, and me and my buddy Kevin O'Connor, aka Kevin O Everything, host an NBA podcast called The Mismatch. They call it The Mismatch because I'm awesome and Kevin is a gigantic nerd. No, no, that's not why at all, Chris. They call it the Mismatch because I have a brain and you're a loudmouth bozo. Good grief. Anyway, listen to our amazing NBA podcast, The Mismatch. Or don't.

We really don't care. We're probably going to win a million awards either way. Chris, we do care. So I don't say that. Please subscribe and listen to the mismatch only on Spotify. Did you really call me a bozo? Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box.

Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. We got what the TV networks would call a regional doubleheader today. First up, Norprinciotti, writer for the Ringer.com, host of the Ringer NFL show, is going to join us on a number of NFL playoff topics, including the strange courtship of TV announcers slash coach Jeff Saturday in Indianapolis, whether the media made Dan Snyder sell the commanders. Her thoughts on Damar Hamlin three weeks after he went to cardiac arrest on the field in Cincinnati. And finally, the guy she used to cover for the Boston Globe, Tom Brady.

Is he going to be an announcer next year? Then Jason Gay, Wall Street Journal columnist will join us to talk about Billy Packer. a legendary CBS college basketball announcer who died on Thursday night, an appreciation of Billy, the guy who taught a generation to say the words Duke University. All right, let's start with Nora. All right, Nora, I got some media-ish, media-adjacent NFL playoff topics I want to get your take on. Oh, good. Number one, are you as fascinated as I am about what's going on with Indianapolis,

owner Jim Ursay and his interim coach Jeff Saturday. I remember who it was. Oh, my gosh, we're like 30 seconds in here and I'm already failing to properly credit someone. I think it might have been Charles McDonald, who's an excellent NFL reporter. But he tweeted, like back when the Jeff Saturday thing was going down for the first time,

he tweeted something like, I've got a party with Jim Ursay just once. And like I think about that once a day, right? Like if we've learned anything this entire season, And it's just like, oh, man, what goes on in that guy's head is fascinating. Yes, I am particularly fascinated with just playing out scenes in my head about what the interviews look like. Because he's done too. And I just wonder, like, so, so Jeff, let's talk about that Vikings game.

What went wrong there? Like, how do you do it? How do you talk about it? How do you say like, so Jeff, remember at the beginning of this, you said, you know, I'll give it a go. And if I suck at it and I lose eight games, then I'll say, God bless you. Thank you so much.

I've had my time and I'm done. Like, are we rethinking that? Like, what do we think? Change in philosophy. Like, what has happened here? But they are like maybe that's over-complicating it because fundamentally, these guys are drinking buddies. So they're probably just hanging out.

And that's what's going on here. It's got to be one of the weirder. relationships. So they're drinking buddies. Saturday's a former Colts star. Saturday is also a former ESPN announcer. And Ursa says, please leave ESPN with basically no coaching experience, high school coaching experience. High school, yeah. Come coach my NFL team. As you say Saturday says, hey, I might suck at this. And then we got some evidence down the stretch. Big blown lead against the Vikings. They just got killed by the Cowboys in that fourth quarter where they gave up, whatever it was, 30 points.

Yep. He has, Jim Mersey is conducting a search, but he hasn't interviewed anybody except for Saturday who he's interviewed twice. They just like hanging out. By the way, like it's really easy to make fun of Jeff Saturday in this situation because he's in a very strange situation.

He didn't ask for this. Now, I guess that gets a little bit fuzzier once like at the beginning, he goes, if I'm terrible at this and the results are terrible, I'll be gone after eight games. And like now, maybe not. But he didn't ask to be put in this position.

This is like Jim Mersey's brainchild and that's what happened. But there's just a lot of it's it's ripe for jokes. If nothing else comes of this that's positive, it is ripe for jokes. That's all that's all I got. Absolutely. I find this funny because would you say that 100% of NFL Twitter and sports Twitter is against

Ursae hiring Saturday full-time? Yes. It's like Taylor Swift is the only entity that can unite Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Jim Ursay is that and Jeff Saturday are the only co-entities that can unite just like every faction of

online sports media. I believe there's a petition in Indianapolis that has been launched with text, including the phrase that Colts fans will revolt. if Saturday has made the permanent head coach. I don't know what that looks like.

Yeah. The online petition feels very Obama administration. Yeah, it is a bit of a throwback. It's cute. We haven't done that in a while. It's people get fired up. It's good to see. I don't pretend does sports writers have any real power,

but it does feel fairly rare when an NFL team does something that 100% of people disapprove of. Is that, is that right? Yeah, definitely, particularly in this case because one, I don't know Jeff Saturday at all. I've never met him. I've never talked to him. My sense from people who do know him, who worked with him at ESPN is that people love him. And maybe that explains some of this.

But people really like that guy. They like being around him. They think he's cool. They think he's a good dude. They think he knows ball. Plus, he's kind of one of us, right? Like, yes, he played and he got all those accolades and he's in the ring of honor and blah, blah, blah, blah. But he's kind of, you know, one of us, one of us.

and everyone has still turned on him. This should mean something. This should just should be some form of evidence. It just feels like it's like if the Broncos had brought back Nathaniel Hackett. I mean, even maybe there was a 5%, 10% that said, you know what? It's not all his fault. Like that would have been a I'm going against the grain moment. Yeah.

But even that is like it's so easy to argue for the status quo, even when the status quo is insane. Right? that like you could almost, well, they already paid him. They don't want to turn over after a year or whatever. When the Jeff Saturday thing happened, it was, you know, Ursa, he'd just done, it was like right after the owner's meetings

where he goes off against Dan Snyder and everyone's like, Jim Orsay! Like, and he gets this sort of hero treatment. And then all of a sudden it's just like, oh, this guy's just crazy. Right? Like, this guy's just like going out on limbs. And, and, and,

I don't mean to devalue the statement that he made and the positive impact of an owner finally saying something on the record about Dan Snyder because that was cool and that was helpful and that was legit. But it felt so just wild that I don't think that we've adopted the justify the status quo brain that happens all the time in this case, which is why the Broncos had to fire Nathaniel Hackett. if that hadn't happened, that would have been bananas. But I almost think it would have been, it would have like flown more smoothly in the normal river of discourse.

Whereas this is just, no one saw this coming, except Jim Mersey maybe. That moment where Jim Mersey was canonized for saying one thing about Dan Snyder, I would like to devalue the discourse about that moment because we knew who Jim Ursay was, right? We knew him. And I think you can take that, you know, as you say, a statement that was in the moment helpful and was correct, um, and value it and also say like, this guy's not a hero. None of these, none of the, no NFL owner is a hero. I just remember a headline Jim Ursay's week of badassery. Okay. Really. No, no owner had a week of badassery. He's like so easy to make into this sort of weird focus. hero, right? Because he goes around in his band and he's like, it's just, yeah, there's a real danger in anointing, in anointing any one of these guys as the savior who's to come to rescue us all. Because then they'll go hire Jeff Saturday.

Speaking of Dan Snyder, here's a basic NFL observer take that I want you to say, yes, it's right or no, I'm completely wrong. It seems to me that the media, in the case of the, Dan Snyder and the commanders succeeded to some extent in holding a largely unaccountable figure, that is the NFL owner or Dan Snyder in particular, somewhat accountable. And that all those pieces we read from the Washington Post from ESPN got us at least halfway down the road to where Dan Snyder has to sell the commanders. Is that fair, do you think? I want it to be. And I think if we say that it got us halfway down the road, then I think that that's fair.

I don't know that we're in this position if Dan Snyder was a contributor to the overall pie. The Washington franchise is, you know, the NFL doesn't have lost leaders. That's not how this works. But if it had one, it's those guys. And if he were pulling his weight, if that team, which I am told, I do not recall, but I am told, used to be like a crown jewel franchise. If they had the political pull to be able to get a new stadium deal done when in theory they have three separate municipalities available to like pit against each other,

if they in a division that's supposed to be the like big media market money making division where, by the way, the other three teams made the playoffs this year, if they were able to do that stuff, I'm not sure that Dan Snyder being held to account in the press would be enough. But I do think that within that context, it has made a difference. So halfway down the road seems spot on to me. That makes total sense, and that is so depressing. Yeah.

That all the revelations. He doesn't seem very nice. would have come to not if he'd gotten a stadium deal. God. Do you think of all the things we know that NFL owners and the league will look at revelations about their brethren and go, well, that's bad, but that doesn't affect, you know, my position on him continuing to be an NFL owner? Do you think the thing about the private eyes was one of or the most damaging thing for

Dan Snyder within the league? You know, I don't know Because I thought You know what I thought Was going to be the big thing Was when it was reported And this was part of what Congress got up in arms about

For a moment there Was that they were skimming money off the top I thought that we were going to find out That like the thing that really did it Was that if there was real evidence That you know Dan Snyder was Pocketing 100K here

And 100K there That even though that is not even pocket change to these guys that that is what they care about and that was going to be the line that you do not cross. As far as I can tell,

that story came and went. I have not heard about it since. So that doesn't seem like it is possible that this was sort of like a Tetris thing, right? Where you take a little bit out, you take a little bit out and then eventually the whole thing falls over.

That's not Tetris. That's Jenga. Just going to move on. those towers made of blocks. I normally have one coffee in the morning, Brian. I've had two today. I don't know. We'll just, you know,

let that be what it is. That maybe, I feel the same way about the hiring investigators thing. It seems like the type of thing that could do it. On the other hand, I just don't know. I really do come back to the fact that that stadium is terrible. It's an injury risk.

Ramparts are falling down and stuff like that. They can't get it done. It doesn't, they don't sell their tickets. The media rights deals are what they are. So again, there's no such thing as a loss leader in the NFL. But they are not pulling their weight. And I think that that is what has mattered more than anything else. All right.

Topic number three on my list for you. Bill Safety, DeMar Hamlin, of course, went into cardiac arrest on the field back on January 2nd. there was a lot said in the days afterwards about football and us watching football and us, you know, worshiping football while we were awaiting word on his condition and his prognosis. Where are you on everything that was said about Damar Hamlin in the aftermath as we sit here three weeks later? Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't totally know.

I think it feels when I stop and think about it, it feels even, it feels even. even though there were a lot of things that were amazing to see all of the donations that piled into his charity, the way that you could tell how that locker room felt about getting to hear from him and see him again. I have some really good friends who cover that team. It seems like, you know, the top line experience of going through this has just been sort of horrible and draining and terrifying. There are some experiences, it seems like people there have. had getting to see him again that are really wonderful, relatively speaking. I do, when I stop and think about it, like, we move on really fast. When that happened, like, you're sitting

there watching Monday night football. And like, I just remember sitting on my couch being like, we're waiting to find out if somebody's alive. Like, that's, that's really strange. And it's strange, even though it's, to be honest, something that I've thought about, like, and wondered, would something like this ever happen during the course of, you know, my lifetime of watching football, my career covering it? I've certainly had that thought process of, like, to be really blunt about it, I wonder if someone will ever die on the field while I cover this sport because that is the nature of an incredibly brutal game.

And it's very odd that now it's almost a month later. and the bills are out of the playoffs. I'm going to turn my TV on Sunday and go through a whole championship round. It's going to be really exciting. I don't know how much I'm going to think about it. Like, I don't know how much unless I wrote myself a note and said, reflect on this situation. Like, I don't think they're going to talk about it very much on the broadcasts.

I don't think it's going to be, it's just not, we just move on so quickly. And that's fine in some ways. It's not, the bills aren't in the championship round. In some ways, like, life has to go on and we can hold multiple thoughts in our minds at once. I do really hope, I don't know that I have a lot of optimism that this will be the case. I do really hope that people will remember how that felt in the moment the next time there's a labor dispute. Because that's the only time it's really going to, like, have potential consequence for other players, right? It's like, they get into these situations.

And I heard Dominique Foxworth talk about this a lot. Just reminding, bringing up that when there are labor disputes, most fans side with the owners. Most fans side with management. And that's weird. It's a weird thing. It doesn't happen in most industries. You know, you want to stick up with a little guy. And for some reason, our brains go very quickly to, what, these millionaires want more money?

And so I don't know. I think I would really be, I guess, encouraged about the state of how people process what they see during a football game. If we could hold the memory of wondering if that guy was going to live or die in our mind's long enough to remember it when, you know, the fact that in this case, when it's high profile, the NFL is going to do whatever they need to do so that. he's okay and he gets the support and he gets the resources that he needs because everybody's watching. But he would not have had a lot of vested benefits if it weren't for, you know, special circumstances, right?

Like he wasn't at the point where he would get, nobody gets lifetime health insurance, right? But like he had not played long enough where absent special circumstance, he would get the full vested veteran set of post-playing career benefits. So that is my soapbox. I don't know. The real answer your question is I don't know how to feel. And it's strange to be able to turn the page, even though I don't totally know what the other option is. It's so well said. And I love what you say about just remembering that moment and

trying to all of us, you know, both of us in the media and then fans at home, just trying to put yourself back in the space we were on that Monday night. Because the moving on happened. I mean, I remember walking through an airport, you know, on Wednesday, two days later, day and a half later and looking up the TV and it was like ESPN on where will the, how will the championship, the playoff seedings happen now, you know, like that was a talk show segment, you know, and I remember looking at the website that day and it'd be like the way too early 2023 mock draft. You know, it was the moving on was happening instantaneously. And again, that's the way this business works.

I understand we're part of it and certainly and all that kind of stuff. but that ability for all of us to put ourselves back in that moment, that is that is exactly what we need to do from time to time at least if we can manage it. I've been very angsty about football this year just because I think it felt like the year started with all we talked about was Deshaun Watson and the year ended with somebody facing a life or death situation on the field. The thing that has come up for me more and more is is trying to sort of, and this is not a justification for, or maybe it is, you know, maybe this is how I justify my own involvement in

this sport and perpetuating its popularity or whatever. It is a reflection of, you know, I think often like I will think of the NFL as this like bad actor and it's not doing the right things and it's perpetuating a lot of exploiting players and doing all this bad stuff. I don't think that's wrong. It is very easy to think of it as like, this is this is what the NFL does. This is what the NFL is. It is also sort of what the world does. It is like, it is a reflection of, you know, a massive lowercase C conservative corporation, which is the type of entity that that runs almost everything that we do and interact with in the world. But it's much more public facing than, than the average one or even something like Amazon,

right? Like we don't sort of think about, we don't think about Amazon's values as often as we think about the NFL's values. And I don't know what that means. Like, I don't know what the takeaway from that is. But I guess mine is that you can you, you know, this is for people in media. There are opportunities in these horrible moments where you can try to just nudge. something like set the framework for how something's covered or something's talked about a mill, mill, millimetre in in some direction. And it's really dissatisfying because it just seems like

it's painfully slow in getting people's minds to change or getting people to, you know, side with players in a labor dispute or something. And maybe that doesn't happen the next time it comes around. But like if you can shove something, just even the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest, bit in the right direction. It does matter because there aren't that many slivers of the universe with as broad reaches as the NFL. And I think that contributes to why it feels so painfully slow and unresponsive and immune to consequence.

But when it even just a little bit helps, or maybe it doesn't and nothing matters and we're all, you know, I don't know. I go back and forth. I'm with you. I'm totally with you. And the point about it's like, it's the NFL, but it's also us. Absolutely right. Absolutely right.

On a very different note, I want to ask you about Tom Brady, whom you used to cover day to day back in your Boston Globe days. I was watching his press conference after the Bucks lost to the Cowboys. And he ended it by thanking the beat writers in Tampa from the podium. Have you ever been thanked from the, podium by a player in your days coming football? Yeah. Yeah, especially at the end of a season.

You get a little bit of like, thank you for, you know, the Patriots players would actually do it a lot because it would sometimes be a little bit of a mea culpa, like, sorry for all the times. I kind of had to be a jerk this year. Season would end. They would be like, you guys have a hard job and we appreciate it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you're, you know, it's fine.

Everybody's having a good time. So, yeah, a few times. I do think, I think when Julian Edelman retired, he had a really sort of heartfelt thank you, which was interesting because, to be very frank, I found him very difficult to cover and not always pleasant to deal with, which is not, to be very clear, that is not a one-to-one reflection on what someone is like. People just handle having a bazillion microphones in their face in very different ways. But it's happened a few times.

Where are you on the question of whether Tom Brady will be calling games for Fox for $37 million a year starting next season? I don't really think he will be. That's mostly, though, because you've intimated that to me, Brian. You're the expert here that that might not happen. Yeah. There's two ways, right? There's Tom Brady's playing for the Raiders or whomever. Yeah.

And then there's just Tom Brady has other life plans. Yeah. Well, so when we talk about the football piece of it, I feel like I have more more formed thoughts. I think he will keep playing. I think he's going to come back. So I guess in that sense,

he will not be calling games for Fox because he would still be playing. Whether, like, what Tom Brady's future is at Fox I think is fascinating. I think the revelation that has been Greg Olson is a funny little wrinkle

in that. Tom Brady is really fantastic at a lot of things. I've listened to his podcast, which makes it hard for me to think of him being an effective broadcaster, which even though, you know, I don't want to be silly here, right? Because he's Tom Brady and he's much more famous than Greg Olson. And I think Fox, if they're going to pay him that much money,

it seems like they've pretty much made it clear that he would be on the A team. If he's not good and everybody loves Greg Olson, that's interesting. Like that's a funny little dynamic they might have going there. But I think he's going to play another year. So I guess they can at least kick the can down the road. Yeah. And it may not matter. I mean, here's the thing about Greg Olson.

I totally agree. I think Greg Olson has turned into a fantastic announcer. He is also an announcer that is very, very much speaking to people that you and I know on Twitter. Yeah. You know, like he is our friend's favorite football announcer. He's your favorite film nerds. favorite broadcaster. Absolutely.

So I wonder, you know, when we talk about Tom Brady being one of the most famous people on the planet, there is a certain Fox is worried about people like us and then they're just worried about everybody because football's audience is everybody. This was also spelled out pretty clearly for Greg Olson, like, hey, you can have this job. You get to call a Super Bowl, which is, by the way, awesome. That's a tiny number of people ever have called a Super Bowl on TV. and he'll be really good at it. And it's also a little bit different

than like the 49ers quarterback situation. I mean, there's a job for Greg Olson at Fox where he will be working every week and calling playoff games into the second round of the playoffs probably. I don't know what their schedule is like next year, but like it's cool, right? It's not like two five stars, you know,

signing with one college. Like, well, one guy's going to play and one guy's going to transfer. Well, no, no, no. They can both, announce. That'd be cool. And I wonder how much people even really know, like, how many people are tuned into this is the A team, this is the B team, how many people in that set of not the people that are tweeting about football stuff five times a day, but the broader audience, I don't know how

much that, and when I say, I don't know, I really mean I don't know. I don't mean that that I think it doesn't. I don't know how much that penetrates people's consciousness. It's hard for me to think that it would. Not a ton. Not a ton. The only thing is just that Tom Brady, like the flip side of Tom Brady being super, super, super famous is that if he faceplants at this, he's super, super famous.

And he's also someone who historically people have enjoyed not liking, which is not something he deals with particularly well. So it doesn't help someone in that situation if there is like golden, boy on the B team who, you know, Greg Olson's not a star, but Greg Olson, like, Greg Olson's got a whole head of golden fluffy hair. Like, the more people know him. I think they will like him. And I think that is true of the film nerds. I also think it's true of like suburban moms or whoever we're talking about. Um, so I don't know. It would be a good soap opera. It's hard for me to imagine to Tom Brady complete faceplant just because he'll work hard at it.

You know, I don't know what face plan even means. His face plant means Drew Breeze? His face plant means like I just cannot speak on television. I have nothing to say during a football game. So it's hard to imagine just the complete faceplant. But also on indecipherable Patriots related stories, are you enjoying the media's attempt to figure out who Bill Belichick, assistant coaches are going to be next year?

It is like, is it, is the right reference here, the Twilight Zone or is it Groundhog Day? I think it's Groundhog Day. I'm two for two with this. We've done this like five years in a row. It feels like it. Congratulations to Bill O'Brien. That seems to make a lot of sense. Patriots Palace intrigue.

I don't even really, I'm sort of past the point of caring what the specifics of it. are, I do think it's interesting that, you know, there's a piece in the Boston Herald the other day about everything that went wrong with the offense this year and how much the players didn't like it. The thing that was interesting to me is that a lot of the, the Iyer seemed to be directed at Joe Judge and not at Matt Patricia, which I felt like I learned something from that, I guess. So, yes, it's always fun to get a little behind the scenes glimpse there. The thing that, like, I keep thinking about is, and look, I'm not really in the business of

rising to the defense of Joe Judge and Matt Patricia. But we started the year with it seeming like those two were in those positions in part because Bill Belichick, like, really wanted to help his guys out. I think we can say pretty clearly it did not help. Like, the reputations of Bill O'Brien. Joe Judge and Matt Patricia were not doing great when they went into those roles, which was part of all the hoopla about why those decisions were made. They're worse now.

They're in worse spots now than they were a year ago in terms of trying to, you know, both of those guys have had unsuccessful 10 years as head coaches, but presumably they would eventually like to try to get another shot at doing that. The needle did not move in a positive direction. So I just, I wonder, I wonder how many rounds of this that organization can withstand before it's sort of like, hey, it's been a while since you won a Super Bowl. And it seems like everybody's fighting all the time. And what are we the Jets here? Last question for you.

Ten days from now, you and I are going to be sitting in the wilds of Radio Row. I'm thrilled. Phoenix getting ready for the Super Bowl. Now, Radio Row and all the stuff that happens before the Super Bowl, that is my Super Bowl. The game is secondary. That's why I'm there. For an actual football reporter like yourself, what's the most useful thing you get out of that five days before the big game? So probably the access with teams is the most meaningful.

Like you do get a certain amount of, um, it could be really. really good when when I was covering the Patriots and they were there, the stuff that I would find most useful was when you could just go find not a top five most recognizable people on the team, but someone just below that level or even some of the assistant coaches. And during those availability, they would just sit at a table and they're so bored and no one's talking to them. And you can go sit down and you can have a longer, more in-depth conversation with someone in that type of setting than you will have the entire. rest of the year. And that's great. It's a little harder to do when you're not a beat writer

because you just don't, you know, you're going up to someone that you don't have much background with necessarily, but it's still totally possible. So that stuff's good. There is a lot of, it's for pods and stuff, it's great to just have everybody sort of in the same radio roast do and you can get guests and you can catch up with people and that's awesome. It's not like the combine in the same way where it's sort of a sourcing. meet people for drinks, get information. Like, you can get a lot of, you can get a lot in a short period of time

because everybody is forced to be in the same room. I don't know that those people are always in the best mindset to like really be reflective and think about outside of the box topics and stuff because they have to play in the Super Bowl in a week. But it's just fun. It's just got good energy. It's got, you know, silly stuff happens.

Absolutely. All right, Nora Princeati, ringer.com, ringer NFL show, soon to be Radio Row in suburban Phoenix, or actually downtown Phoenix, I think. Nora, thanks for coming on the press box. See in Phoenix. All right, Jason Gays here, Wall Street Journal columnist, author of I wouldn't do that if I were me. Jason, I regret to inform you that the sports media funeral gong has sounded once again. Yesterday we lost Billy Packer. who called the final four of the NCAA tournament on TV 34 times in a row,

a run that stretched from 1975 to 2008. As a CBS announcer, Billy taught a generation never to just say Duke, but always to say Duke University. Where do we start with Billy Packer? Well, I'm afraid this is one of those episodes, Brian, where you and I, like, you know, sit down at the campfire and have to tell everybody about Billy Packer a little bit because Billy Packer's been off the air for close to 15 years now. He retired from CBS. They parted ways, I believe, after the 2008 season.

But you're right. He had a seismic impact upon the sport when it was a totally different beast. The way that we think about college basketball has radically changed. This thing, this event, these final fours, may not have been Super Bowl in scale, but they were awfully close. They were completely bigger things than they are today. And when you think about that Billy Packer called the biggest one of them all, which of course was Magic Bird, Indiana State, Michigan State, 1979, a ratings record that I believe has not been eclipsed. You know, his impact is vast. You're absolutely right. And you

almost have to start in the old man way with you never understand how big this guy was. Yeah. Or the sport, frankly. Or the sport. So a couple of things, right? TV was bigger. Network TV was bigger. The sport was bigger for reasons we can get into it a minute, both good and bad. Yeah. And then, you know, I feel Billy because he did college basketball, which was not the sport that had eight A-list national pundits attached to it, especially during that era. Sure. He was bigger. I mean, I was trying to think of comps today.

Like, who would you tell somebody of 2023 who's like Billy Packer? And the only one I could come up with is like Kirk Herb Street and college football in the sense that he's a master of a sport with a hundred teams. Though Kirk, I think, cares a little bit more about whether people like him than Billy ever did. Oh, definitely. I mean, in some ways, if you were to make Billy Packer today, it would be kind of a combination of Herb Street and Finebaum. It would be those two things put together. You know, you have Fine bomb, of course, as kind of the, you know, the commentator on sort of the cultural side of

football and what it all means. And then, of course, you know, being in the booth for the biggest games of them all. Yeah, it's just, I mean, like, you know, I hate to be the person saying, like, it'll never be this way again, but I feel pretty confident it will never be this way again. For some good reasons and bad, I mean, like, there are some benefits to this. I'm sure we'll into that too. Absolutely. I think one thing I've always remember about him is just the way he looked on television. No offense to Billy, but he was not your typical TV dreamboat. No. Even when he was standing next to your TV dream boat in Jim Nance, his play-by-play partner for many years, he was way short of the Nance, who is a tall gentleman. He was bald, had white hair for a lot

of the time growing out of the side of his head, kind of looked more like English professor than television announcer. Yes. Yes. You'd see him with the glasses on sometimes on broadcast row. And yet, and yet, Billy Packer was a jock. He was an ex-juck. He was a Wake Forest basketball player who famously, you know, turned away Duke to go to play for the Demon Deacons. And, you know, he does fit that mold, at least. Absolutely. An ex-joc who then became when he was an announcer, not somebody just describing the action, but a real firebreed. prudent of college basketball. Yeah.

Like, again, I think that's something that's very hard. When you say Paul Feinbaum, that's definitely the right path here. Because in that day and age, Billy had takes not just on what was happening on the floor, but who got the number one seed in the tournament? Right. Which then would make that coach mad at Billy, and there would be this whole media back and forth. Right. And sort of most controversially, and I think the thing that really sent people over the edge was that

Billy had a really strong opinion about who and who should not be in this thing. He sort of regarded himself as somewhat of a gatekeeper of college basketball. And he sort of infamously had very strong opinions in opposition to the inclusion of a lot of mid-majures. You know, he always felt that like, you know, the fifth or sixth seed from a, you know, major conference, like a big tenor, certainly the ACC, which is his main thing, deserved to be there more than some random school to him, some random school. And of course, over time, we have realized, and I think television has realized that when you get those incredible, you know, small schools, the outsiders, the Cinderella's, that's the magic of March Madness to this day. I mean, that's the thing that I think drives this.

I don't think anyone is like, oh, you know, it would be great. Let's see the number one and number two seed, you know, take this all the way to the end. Totally. And as you've admitted them and the sport has changed. they've become the big boys. Yeah, sure. Right. Zagas become the big boys.

That's interesting. Yes. I think when I look back on him, what is so jarring to me was Billy Packer, to the extent anyone on TV could claim this did not seem to want to be liked.

Yes. He didn't worry about that. I think Tim Mcarver had that a little bit at the end to when he was on Fox doing the World Series his last couple years on television. but you know the ex-coach archetype on TV it's it's Bill Raftery it's it's Al McGuire they're wild and crazy guys right yeah we're just talking college

basketball among friends Packard was I'm gonna give you my opinion I read this quote from him look I'm abrasive he told the New York Times I've always pushed the edge but the positions I've taken are not up the top of my head that was again not a guy hosting a radio show from Charlotte that was the guy calling the final four on C's right Yes. Right. But think, this is important. Being a crank on television was a far more sustainable career in 1979 than it is today. When you consider the amount of places that the public can react to your presence in real time, to your criticisms, to what they like about you, what they dislike about you, Billy Packer could call a game, walk out the door, walk down the street, not looking at a phone.

He's not looking at social media. Maybe the biggest pushback he's going to get are people like literally analog calling up CBS to complain. And then like Rudy Mertzky's call him. And that's kind of it. It's a different environment today, of course. And I think there's so much more emphasis placed upon likability and candidly sort of self-policing to appear likable. And, you know, we can discuss whether or not that's been a positive development. I would argue probably not.

I don't think so either. And it's funny because there was a moment when Billy kind of crept into the internet age. He leaves CBS in 2008. Tim McCarver really crept into the internet age. He really crept into the Rivals.com age. And I know you're a big rivals guy. But it's like he was the bane of message boards. I mean, he really was like if he was the Darth Vader of college basketball message boards, I believe.

Totally. And people are like, I'm mad at this guy. He is giving opinions on TV about my favorite team or a team I like or a team I hate. And this is enraging me. And I totally agree with you. I think at the time I was probably, you know, eating the cheese in the mousetrap and mad and whatever else. But now when everybody is, oh, Jim, oh, Jim, what a pass. Right.

I miss it. I miss that. No, 100%. And also just think of how we're conditioned nowadays. days now, you know, how many of us have watched, you know, a World Series game that's eight to nothing in the second inning or a football game that's, you know, probably a bad example because there been so many crazy comebacks in football this year. But like, you know, a football game that's clearly one-sided and just sort of laughed at the announcer saying, like,

all it takes, Brian, all it takes is a pair of back-to-back grand slams and they're right back in this thing. He was the guy who, you know, again, I keep using the word infamous, but I mean, this was sort of like a beloved kind of infamy. I think he pretty pretty. announced a couple of games pretty much over in the first 10 minutes of final fours, which was really frowned upon. I mean, there's no producer in the truck who's saying, like, you know what, you'd be good. If you can declare this thing over early in the first half. There was a moment when CBS would do the selection show every year where they would finally get the brackets. And again, this is a very analog way compared to the way we consume it now.

and in my memory they would go to Billy who would have these takes about it and it would kind of be the only take you would get. Right, right, right. Now you can, of course, you can take shop. If you don't like a take, you can just go across the street and find somebody who's more in line with your mind and take shop that way.

I mean, he is sort of the perfect synthesis of incredible timing. I mean, to cover college basketball, to be an analyst for college basketball this time, this is like you're the DJ during the bridge, British invasion. Okay. This is like, if you're ever going to be doing this, this is the time to do it. But matched to that, a guy that didn't give an S about public opinion and was going to say what he felt. And, you know, of course, you know, he had incredible biases and blind spots and made numerous mistakes and there are multiple controversies around things that he said on the air. But he did sort of

seize that platform. You know, it's like when people get jobs of this. nature. You know, it's like you're going to be calling these big games. You kind of want to see them grab it and ring it for everything that's worth. And he certainly did that for a long time. Absolutely. One thing that's interesting is CBS during the 80s had this very curious way of looking at announcing where they thought that the color analyst should be the star of the broadcast in every sport. Yeah. The play by play partner should be a pass first point guard. Yes. There to call the action, but really to set up the color analyst to become the big star. So if you think of the play by the guys, it's Jack Buck.

It's Nance, right? Yes. And what's interesting, so you had these color analysts, McCarver, we mentioned on baseball, Packer on college basketball, John Madden on the NFL, who were set up not just to be like famous people calling games, but to have a pulpit, to be like empowered and enabled. to be the big opinion guy. Like that was a structural part of their job that was beyond just television or their personal whims.

Now Madden interpreted that to be, you know, whimsical and funny, but he would also have his moments where he would come down with the hammer. To McCarver, we know his vision of baseball in addition to all the things he would explain about baseball in the game. And Billy the same way, right?

And that was very much his interpretation of the job, but that was also what the network's interpretation of the job circa the 80s was. Right. And I think also you can kind of go back to Patient Zero who is of course

CoSell, who was the person who really, really seized upon the idea that everyone needed to know what he thought at all times,

no matter how informed or not informed he was and really just soaked in the celebrity of that. He was not somebody who liked the backlash.

He was a little different than Packer. I think he was sensitive about it, oddly enough. Yeah. Does anybody like the backlash

really? Well, I mean, I think that some people are genuine about like not engaging with it. I find it very hard to believe this day and age that anybody can be isolated from it or insulated and just shut it all out. I think everybody's quite aware of what the public opinion is of their performance on television. But I mean, let me just go back to one quick other thing about, you know, your point about what CBS was like in this era. Another part of this, and I think it's important when we talk about television and sports because television sports has been really elevated on a pedestal over the last generation.

When you think about where it was in terms of an authority, in the 70s and 80s, it was a haircut and a jock to be glib. Very fair. And the authorities were the columnists. They were the sports writers. They were the people who like, you know, the Jim Murray's and the Dan Jenkinses and the people who wrote about this. They were the people who were the intellects and the and the, and the.

and the critics and sort of the strongest sort of voices within the framework of the sport. The TV people were kind of like the lighthearted promoters of whatever was happening at the time. Somewhere along the way, and you can definitely tie it to cable news, I mean, cable sports, you know, it became so proliferated and everywhere. And you started to develop people who were incredibly gifted about coming on the air and giving their opinion about everything. And now that's, you know, omnipresent. But I think that shift happened.

And it's not, you know, obviously I say this as a columnist, regretfully, that error is long gone. You know, columnists are not look upon as the sort of main authority on sporting events. We're kind of this, you know, we're over in the corner making, you know, I don't know what I'm making old fashions. And I do feel, again, we're relying on memory here a little bit, but I do feel that handover was sort of pretty obviously happening in the 80s. Newspaper columnists were still going strong. But like, you know, John Madden was so big that it wasn't just John Madden be funny. It was what is who are John Madden's favorite players? Oh, wait, that's a television show, right?

He is shape, trying to shape the way you think about football and certainly Packer on a college. That you could see it happening, right? Yes. Just because sports on TV was coming so big. Those guys were getting richer, right? Salaries are going up big time during that age. When I next treat myself to a little YouTube holiday, it's going to be to watch. Billy Packer call Final Fours with Brent Musburger.

Yeah. Let's talk about the exception to the rule where the personality guy is the analyst rather than the play by play. I mean, you talk about two huge personalities who called big games together. Sure. I want to relive that because I don't remember that clearly enough. I mean, if anybody takes the opportunity, I know there's been a lot of stuff circulating on social media about, you know, Packer clips, good ones, bad ones, silly ones,

annoying ones. You know, it really is time travel because you have a completely different sport and its structure and the way that teams were, you know, put together, teams became famous, coaches became famous, players played, you know, four seasons, you know, in a way that they would never know a zillion years do today. Of course, you know, we've had all kinds of change to the sport. The most significant being the lack of permanence in it that athletes come and go. And Rightfully so. I mean, I think they should be entirely entitled to go off and do. I don't even like the age limit or the age minimum for the NBA. But it just created celebrity in a way that college basketball cannot achieve in this environment. And I just can't imagine them ever going back to that world, ever. So let's follow that trail. He was the voice of and in some ways the guardian of the promoter of a particular vision of. quote-unquote amateur athletics. Fair to say?

Yes. And in many ways, a very regrettable version of amateur athletics because it's intertwined with worker exploitation for lack of a better way of putting it.

But there is no doubt that in terms of sort of cultivating audience, in terms of building drama, in terms of just making household names out of people who are fresh out of high school

and we're going to be in our lives for the next three to four years wearing a college jersey, nothing was like it. Absolutely. But it's like when you and I look back, I'm like, man, college basketball was big. College of basketball was fun in this different way than it is today. I mean, I hear this from readers all the time. They'll say like, oh, you know, I really love sports when like the guys had to have second jobs in the summer. Like that sounds terrible.

This sounds great for them. Yeah. You know who was making a fortune during those years? CBS. Yes. No, Billy Packer himself, Jim Nance,

like, you know, yeah, yeah. They were doing fine. Right. No, I don't think it was great

that Johnny Unitas had to host at a restaurant in the off season. It's terrible. I know. And, and, you know, and again,

that was, that was inextricable from this. Like, there's no, there's no way that you can look at this. I mean, hell, we could talk about the 80s NFL

didn't have free agency. Yes. But when we look back fine, fondly and we look back at the television coverage of such eras, part of the story. I mean, the other thing that's sort of happening in college basketball at the time that he jumps at is it's the end of wooden, right? You're coming at the tail end of the Great Bruin dynasties and that will never come back. And there's, you know, I don't want to say a period of volatility because you still have these like blue blood schools that are just perennial, you know, champions

are favorites. But there's a lot more volatility than there was before. And I think that makes the sport a lot more interesting. I think it's really important that at 1979, not only do you have this incredible showdown with Magic and Larry, who everybody, again, these were household names, Magic and Larry. This is pre-Laker pre-Seltics. These guys were super famous faying in the most important college basketball game.

But then they make the leap and they're awesome there. And they're awesome in professional basketball. at a time when professional basketball is starting to take off as a TV sport. I mean, we've heard it repeated again and again. They save the NBA. Whether or not that's valid, it's a whole different conversation. But championship games were shown on replay. This was not a live television sport.

They transformed the sport holistically. And then it sort of made, this is a weak analogy, but I'm going to go with it. I mean, it really did turn college basketball into this kind of American Idol situation where, you know, was the great stage of what was coming next. And you don't have to look too far to see whether it was Patrick Ewing, Akeem Elijah Juan, you know, Alan Iverson, a number of players who are coming in through the ranks who are just, you know, be going to be incredibly famous very quickly and then we're going to go on to big, great things. I mean, it's funny to think about watching Georgetown, North Carolina. And Jordan, of course, hits the great shot, I believe, as a freshman,

or is he a sophomore at the time? I think he's a freshman. He's kind of a side player. I mean, he's an incredible talent. Everybody knows it. But it's like, oh, Michael Jordan, because there's James Worthy out there. Patrick Ewing is, you know, the player of the year.

You know, it was remarkable how college basketball players got to be fully formed characters over a period of time. Now, again, I don't think it's fair to go back to that. But it definitely just made it a different composition to cover. And if we want to tick off one more, regrettable cultural current from that age, especially versus the NBA, right? It would be like, oh, here is the purity, right? Here is, of course.

Here is amateurism. NBA, ooh, that's, you know, people were saying at the time, that's drugs, right? That's the spoils of fame and things like that, right? Yes, 100%. And like college basketball has still vestiges of it, you know, this really noxious cult of coach, you know, the idea that these coaches are just kind of like these heroic figures who last decades and are not to be questioned and create culture and are not operators and are in it for the kids and are in it for the school.

They're always teaching, Jason. Look at it. He's down 20 and he's still teaching on the sidelines. Right, right, right. I mean, you know, look how much Bobby Knight was romanticized. An incredible college basketball coach in terms of the results. But like Bobby Knight in 2022, could you imagine? It was barely imaginable in the early 2000s.

I should say 2023. There's a senior moment for me. Oh, that's okay. Can we dig a little bit into Billy Packer's Wikipedia page here before we go? Oh, yes. An incredible Wikipedia page. Great eccentricities. Yeah, let's get in there. One of my favorite stories of all time is 1998. And I read about this in Larry Stewart, who was the LA Times of Sports Media Writers' memoir. Billy Packer had seen a couple of pieces on 60 minutes about college basketball. And it being 60 minutes, they were about scandals in college basketball. Now, it should be noted for people here that 60 Minutes is airing on the same network that Billy Packer works for.

This is what Billy Packer says of his pals in the news division at CBS. 60 Minutes is a cancer in our organization, and you can quote me on that. I don't care how much money they bring in. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's an important part of it, the money part of it, because let's not forget, not only was CBS, you know, a sister program in CBS, the number one show on television

for decades, by far, outrated Dallas, outrated dynasty. I mean, it was an incredible, like, profit generating juggernaut. And it was the sacred cow of sacred cows. And that kind of speaks to what Billy Packer was all about. Oh, my God. He's going on, like, lacing into Leslie Stahl and all kinds of things. And the LA Times wonderfully called Mike Wallace in his office for comment about Billy Packer's remarks. And Wallace said, although I've never met him, I'm sure Billy Packer is a fine fellow.

Yes. I mean, in fairness, all this stuff is, you know, looks different, you know, through the passage of time. You know, to revisit what counted as a scandal in college basketball in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s even really looks ridiculous. You know, are we really policing like, you know, visits of players, you know, whether or not they were given free meals, phone calls, you know, even bags of cash and small. all amounts. I mean, they really look kind of silly when you, when everybody is quite aware of that this is a multi-billion dollar industry. And as we stand here in 2023, Brian, this is a $1 billion a year television contract. One billion for March madness alone. So the notion that we're going to somehow come after people for, you know, free shoes or it's just absurd. He had a Cocellian comment about Alan Iverson in 1990. Brutal, brutal.

He had an incident with two students, two female students at the aforementioned Duke University. Yep. It was a credential incident. Getting even deeper into his Wikipedia page, you were sending me this before the show began today. He was involved in the OJ investigation as an amateur. Yes, yes. he, I believe, hired a

psychic to somehow search for the murder weapon, I believe. Do I have that correct? I don't have the wiki in front of me. You do have that correct. He was a polymath of polymath. He, Brian, late in his life, he was in the vaping business.

I thought you were going to go. Okay. He got into vape. I mean, as a vapor, but as a investor in vaping. He became a super fan of MMA, cage fighting. Unbelievable. You know, the guy, you couldn't have made him up.

Would he have been the Joe Rogan style figure of cage fighting if he'd just come along at a slightly different time? I can see him doing that. Honestly, I think he would have been really good at that. Talk about something where you need to be opinionated. Well, isn't the main part of that job is you have to kind of put your arms back upon your two other fellow analysts and go right?

Whoa! Completely shocked. Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember, but he had some highlights and saw today where he was like laughing when a shot would go in at the buzzer because it was so crazy.

High-fiving players. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, he might have been able to pull that off. He also, when he leaves CBS in 2008, said he had a big project. This was to the New York Times and quote, it involves websites and interactive games. Hmm.

So Billy really was ahead of his time. Yeah. He also, by the way, of that murder weapon that he was looking for with a psychic in the OJ case, this is also from the Times. Packer said his psychic said he found the knife and the police wanted nothing to do with him. I can already see the athletic story here, right? The college football analyst, the knife and the psychic. Billy Packers attempt to solve the OJ murders.

Can you imagine like you're down in the precinct in L.A. And somebody comes, hey, Curtis, I got a tip. The murder weapon's been found. Who's it from? Billy Packer. He's hired a psychic. Guy from CBS. God.

I do miss him. I feel like if he were on, had been on television the last five years, I would have probably had 50 tweets about him arguing with, you know, his pronouncements about a player or his feelings about the sport or everything. I know I would have.

But as we said earlier, in retrospect, I miss Packer in particular and I missed the kind of announcer he was, especially. 100%. I do feel like end of an era is the most overused and factually incorrect statement that people do when they, you know, honor the recently deceased. But Billy Packer's career has impact, the sport that he covered. I mean, we have that. that is gone.

Never to return. There will be some really interesting developments in college basketball as NIL increases, as different opportunities increase for athletes, whether it's going straight to the G League and so on. But we will not get back to where it once was. If I could throw one more cliche on your woodpile there, was synonymous with the sport he covered? Yeah.

It's Billy Packer, synonymous with college basketball. Yeah, I mean, you know, there is part of you that you cannot help but feel nostalgic for what those games were. I feel like even with college football, which is now eclipsed college basketball in terms of that championship moment with its own version of March Madness now, you know, they just kind of riveted you. It was destination television and those ratings are, you know. unachievable. I don't even know if that's a word, but they are unachievable now, Brian. Totally. Totally. And we've seen, you know, look, CBS has had a bunch of guys in that spot. It's not, it's not the same job, right? It's not the same sport. It's not the same job. You know. Not the same team. No offense to go raftering. No offense to onions and hip hip.

And which is not to say that there aren't some incredible things that happen. I mean, like, all of us were incredibly, I mean, I don't know, incredibly rivet is the way putting it about like the theater of mike sheshechevsky's farewell last year especially you know doom at the hands of north carolina was remarkable i mean that was great great television zions bursting onto the scene with the blue devils a couple seasons ago as big as it got um but i just think those moments are fewer and farther between huge thanks to nora prunciati for popping on earlier he is jason gay i'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Erica Servantes. Next week, we have the second installment of our One Perfect Story series. A few weeks ago, we had Stephen Roderick to come on,

talk about Lindsay Lohan and Paul Schrader. This one's going to be about a very famous sporting person of the era we're talking about. Of course, back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then.