February 08, 2005
Billy Packer Many regular readers
Billy Packer
Many regular readers of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” no doubt dislike sports. After all, having cultivated a strictly highbrow audience with our cosmopolitan toilet humor, we shouldn’t expect any different. Still, dear reader, we hope that you do not hold it against us if we inform you that numerous members of the crack young staff enjoy an occasional college basketball game. Or, as they call it in college basketball, match.Naturally, dear reader, we consider such sporting events rather silly. After all, celebrating the fact that your university rounded up the most talented pituitary cases in the land and pretends that they attend school isn’t exactly much of an accomplishment. But, hey, something’s got to make you proud of your school, and, quite frankly, it’s unlikely to be the English Department.
So, dear reader, before the ersatz excitement that surrounds March Madness draws apace, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” aim to excoriate one fellow who does his best to make college basketball excruciating. He’s even worse than Greg Gumbel, a man so un-hip he makes Pat Boone seem like James Brown.
We refer, of course, to Billy Packer.
And who, you may be asking yourself, is Billy Packer? Well, dear reader, Billy Packer is surely the most agonizingly irksome “color commentator” in the history of televised sports. And that, as fans of athletics worldwide know, is saying something.
What exactly makes Mr. Packer so wretched? Why, we’re collectively glad you asked.
Billy Packer is a nasty troll who constantly carps on everyone else’s faults. Just because he coached Wake Forest to some sub-par seasons, he thinks he is God’s gift to basketball, coaching, officiating, and—now that we’re at it—life.
Whereas other play-by-play men go out of their way to laud the coaches and players of college basketball, Billy Packer offers nothing but mean-spirited grunts. Nothing ever lives up to Billy Packer’s standards.
In Billy Packer’s world, Daniel Ewing can’t take free throws as well as Billy Packer. Dee Brown can’t dunk as well as Billy Packer. Sean May can’t rebound as well as Billy Packer. John Chaney can’t coach as well Billy Packer.
Geez: We think that Lynne Cheney could coach basketball better than Billy Packer.
In fact, we think that CBS, the network that gives this chuckleheaded misanthrope a paycheck, ought to initiate a “Billy Packer Basketball Season.” All of the teams can be coached by Billy Packer. All of the teams will be made up of Billy Packer. And Billy Packer can do all the officiating, so that we can be sure all of the calls are correct.
We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have a hunch that this would prove about as entertaining as a dentist’s appointment.
Still, it would probably be more popular than women’s basketball.
