Duke vs. North Carolina Smackdown

Bill Simmons from ESPN.com has a pretty funny commentary on this event. He says,

I don't mean to pile on Billy Packer here -- OK, maybe I do -- but when you're already considered to be one of the biggest apologists on the planet for Duke basketball, is it really a good idea to keep making excuses for a Duke player after he just threw a malicious elbow at Carolina's best player with 15 seconds remaining in an 12-point game? That was one of the strangest sequences I've ever watched in a televised basketball game. Here's a rough transcript (I'm doing it from memory): (We see a replay of Gerald Henderson measuring Hansbrough, flying over from six feet away, then delivering a Macho Man Savage-type elbow into Hansbrough's face one second after Hansbrough had already been stripped of the ball.) Packer: "Yeah, he was going for the ball ... that was NOT intentional." (We see another replay of the same thing from a different angle -- this time, it looks like Henderson could potentially be arrested for what just happened.) Packer: "See, from that replay, there's NO QUESTION that Henderson was going for the ball ... that was definitely an accident.) (Jim Nantz thinks about mentioning that Hansbrough had already been stripped of the ball before Henderson even raises his elbow, realizes that he has to announce games with Packer for the next four weeks, doesn't want it to be awkward, decides against saying anything at all, starts day-dreaming about the Masters.) Packer: "Nope ... no way. He was going for the ball." (Cut to a replay of Hansbrough walking off the court with his face broken in half.) Packer: "Jim, if anything, that was probably Hansbrough's fault for going after Henderson's elbow with his face ..." You get the idea. We have media criticism rules at ESPN, so I have to tread carefully here ... but have you noticed that Packer somehow turns himself into a major story before EVERY NCAA TOURNAMENT? As I wrote a couple of years ago, I was watching an Indiana State Final Four game from the '79 tournament and they made a big deal before the game about how Packer had publicly attacked Indy State's credentials for the entire tournament, and now they were in the Final Four and he was eating a little crow -- they even showed an awkward interview with him and Larry Bird after the game. This was 28 years ago!!!!!! What chain of events needs to happen for CBS to replace him with a more palatable, more enjoyable, agenda-less lead analyst? Does 100 percent of the country have to band together and say, "We're tired of this guy?" Or are we good at the current number of 97 percent? (Note: After this column was posted, I received a flood of e-mails from Duke fans saying that Packer is NOT a Duke apologist -- in fact, he's considered to be anti-Duke and anti-UNC because he's a Wake Forest alum. I always thought he cowtowed to Coach K over the years, but I'll defer to the masses on this one. Maybe he's just a curmudgeon.)