Packer: Bad Remark, Good Class
It was a great weekend of basketball; it was a tough weekend for one analyst.
CBS officials Sunday said they didn’t expect any repercussions over Billy Packer’s “monkey” comment. The veteran CBS analyst referred to Georgetown star Allen Iverson as a “tough monkey” during the second half of Saturday’s Hoyas-Villanova telecast.
Packer, after consulting with executive producer Rick Gentile, apologized on the air. “I hope nobody took offense to that,” said Packer, who has been a TV analyst for 27 years. “I have great admiration for that kid.”
When told callers to the school complained, Georgetown coach John Thompson came to Packer’s defense, saying, “One thing I do know about Billy is that he is not a racist.”
A CBS spokeswoman declined Sunday to compare Packer’s ill-chosen words with the sexist statements of former golf analyst Ben Wright. “We’re sorry,” she said. “It was an unfortunate choice of words.”
While Packer’s remark likely will become just a footnote on the season, it did recall the furor Howard Cosell created in 1983 when he called Redskins player Alvin Garrett a “little monkey” on ABC’s “Monday Night Football.” Cosell, unlike Packer, didn’t apologize on the air - nor did he have a highly respected African-American coach jump to his defense.
Packer, unlike Cosell, is a class act who quickly realized what he had done wrong and deserves to have the incident put behind him.
The age factor
CBS’ telecast of Sunday’s Michigan-Illinois game was highlighted by Michele Tafoya’s touching halftime interview with Lou Henson. The Illini coach said he was retiring in part because “they use age against you” in recruiting and later broke down while talking about the death of his son, Lou Jr.
Game time
Among Saturday’s telecasts, viewers found out any team with an 11-18 record can make the NCAA tournament (especially if it’s from something called the TAAC); how the mighty have fallen (Bill Hodges, who took Indiana State to the championship game in 1979, now coaches something called Mercer); students at church-affiliated Liberty University like to pass founder Jerry Falwell through the stands instead of the collection plate.
Unusual announcements
Magic Johnson, who knows when the spotlight is shining, took the opportunity of an NBC appearance Sunday to tell Marv Albert he changed his mind about wanting to play on the U.S. Olympic team. “I don’t want to do it,” Johnson told Albert. “It would be too much.”
Almost as surprising was boxer Nigel Benn, after his split-decision loss to Thulane Malinga on Showtime, taking the ring microphone to announce his retirement, then to propose marriage. Weird.
Together again
Mary Carillo once again will run a parallel course with her former mixed doubles partner, John McEnroe. With both NBC tennis analysts Tracy Austin and Chris Evert expecting babies, Carillo will replace the former on the network’s Family Cup and French Open telecasts. When Austin returns for Wimbledon, Carillo will move to HBO.
All of which means Carillo and McEnroe - once childhood pals but now tennis broadcasting’s version of “The Bickersons” - will be crossing paths not only at the U.S. Open, where both work for CBS, but in Paris and London, since McEnroe covers both tournaments for NBC.
“It’s impossible to guess what his reaction will be,” says Carillo, who will team with former Wimbledon champions Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova for some men’s as well as women’s matches on the HBO telecasts.
Wlaf is back
The cable channel Fox Broadcasting plans to turn into a sports network, fX, begins the transition next month when it telecasts 21 World League of American Football regular-season games. ABC (which gave us Brent Musburger) and USA Network (which gave us Helmet-Cam) aired WLAF games in its first two seasons before it took a hiatus.