Admit it, you just can't get him out of your system. Clark Kellogg doesn't bring out the love-him-or-hate-him emotions that Billy does. He'll being doing a special NCAA Tournament show from Las Vegas with Bob Knight and assorted guests, including David Thompson and Christian Laettner on Sunday nights, starting this weekend. Fox Sports Carolinas will actually air the first one at 12 a.m. Monday.
"Over the years, people always said, 'Billy, if you haven't experienced Vegas during the NCAA Tournament, you're really missing something,'" Packer said in a phone interview. "And then, as you know, I have a complete lack of understanding of all of the new age technology — the Internet, the blogging, the interactive television, all of that, so I've been interested in sticking my fingers into that as a businessman." (A recent interviewer made a reference to the Packer entry in Wikipedia, and the former CBS basketball analyst had no idea what he was talking about.)
At any rate, "Billy Packer's Survive and Advance" shows will be televised from the Wynn Las Vegas, owned by Steve Wynn, a friend of Packer's. "The only thing that was off the table. There'd be no references to gambling. This isn't a gaming show."
Packer, Knight and guests will analyze the brackets in the first show and the weekend's action in subsequent shows. Naturally, when Packer was questioned about the wisdom of doing a college basketball show from the nation's gambling capital, he didn't shy away from an argument.
" Where did the U.S. Olympic team prepare for the Olympics? It happened to be in Las Vegas. The Mountain West Conference basketball tournament is in Las Vegas. UNLV won NCAA championship," Packer said. " ... If a person has a problem, they should have a problem after we do our show when they see what we're doing, as opposed to thinking they know what we're doing. ... There'll be no mention of point spreads, no over-and-unders, no depiction of anything to do with gambling whatsoever."
For more classic Packer, check out his recent interview on Fox Sports' "The Best Damn Sports Show Podcast," on which he dishes on why the Big Ten is weak, why Pitt is his pick for the national championship and how he once tried to solve the O.J. Simpson murder case. The Packer interview is more toward the second half of the show.
