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Retirement Hasn’t Quieted Billy Packer

January 12, 2011   Viv Bernstein   No comments

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CHARLOTTE — Those old, iconic CBS Sports jackets are long gone from Billy Packer’s closet. The premier college basketball television analyst for three decades doesn’t own a video or DVD of any of his games, either.

And that Emmy Award Packer won in 1993?

“He’s probably using it as a doorstop,” cracked his son, Charlotte radio personality Mark Packer.

Billy Packer is more likely to display his prized Picasso ceramics or Barbazon art than a faded photograph with some basketball player or coach. He is neither sentimental nor nostalgic about a career he refers to almost dismissively as a “hobby.”

Nearly three years after he left CBS following the NCAA championship game between Kansas and Memphis in 2008, having broadcast 34 Final Fours with NBC and CBS and more tipoffs than he would ever care to count, Packer is focused on private business ventures in a life that remains active away from the cameras and lights.

No, he doesn’t long to return to broadcasting. Nor does he spend much time watching basketball. At any given moment, his TV is just as likely to be turned to the Food Network as SportsCenter.

“I like the chef battles,” Packer said as he turned off a cooking show he was watching one day last month.

But Packer still follows the sport that has in many ways defined his life. That has not changed for the former Wake Forest point guard and assistant coach-turned-broadcaster.

“I have a passion for the history and the value of the game and its direction,” Packer said. “I will say this, not to be in a bragging fashion: I do understand the game. I would not be averse to debate the status of basketball with anybody.”

 

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Kyle Parker Doesn’t Get Happy Ending to Clemson Football Career

December 31, 2010   Viv Bernstein   No comments

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The last snaps of Kyle Parker‘s Clemson career came on Friday afternoon in the Meineke Car Care Bowl, a final, miserable finish to a season that proved more costly than he might have imagined last summer when he chose to play football in 2010 before becoming a professional baseball player.

It ended with a broken rib, a 31-26 loss to South Florida before a half-empty Bank of America Stadium and a net loss of $900,000 given up in his contract with the Colorado Rockies just to play quarterback one more year.

“It’s awful,” said Parker, who was injured on a quarterback option keeper at the goal line in the final minute of the first half with Clemson driving for a score that would cut South Florida’s lead to 17-13 at halftime.

After X-rays showed a cracked rib, Parker was done. He did not play in the second half as the Bulls (8-5) built a 31-13 lead before withstanding a late Clemson rally led by backup quarterback Tajh Boyd.

“I wanted to go out here and play hard and leave with a win and I thought we were doing that,” a dejected Parker said. “Just to have the opportunity stripped is really not the way I wanted it to end.”

 

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Music City Bowl Sweet Redemption for Scarred Tar Heels

December 21, 2010   Viv Bernstein   No comments

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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — This was the season that could have been for North Carolina‘s football team, the year the Tar Heels and their fans thought they might finally bask in the limelight of national recognition. Instead, there was only the glaring light of dual NCAA investigations on a program suddenly on the verge of embarrassment, not greatness.

Amid player suspensions and dismissals that came down weekly for academic misconduct or accepting improper gifts from agents, it was too much to expect the Tar Heels to challenge for the Atlantic Coast Conference and a BCS bid as some predicted they would before the scandals hit.

But if the program was scarred by the investigations, it was not defeated. And that is the other significant story of this roller-coaster North Carolina season. The Tar Heels overcame the suspensions or dismissals involving 14 players, and injuries that affected 21 more, to finish a surprisingly respectable 7-5 and earn a bowl bid in a season that could have been much, much worse.

The Music City Bowl Dec. 30 in Nashville, Tenn., might not be the BCS showcase the Tar Heels once aspired to, but it’s sweet redemption for a team many wrote off.

“I am probably more pleased and happier with the way the season went than probably most of you could imagine,” said coach Butch Davis as the team prepared to face Tennessee (6-6). “In 37 years of coaching, I don’t know that I’ve ever been around a group of kids that have been as resilient, as hard working, as willing to buy into doing whatever it was gonna take, sacrifices they were gonna have to make, the ability to block out distractions to focus on the things that they could control and play and compete as hard as they could.

 

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Faded Power N.C. State May Once Again Move to Front of ‘Pack

December 17, 2010   Viv Bernstein   No comments

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The glory years of North Carolina State basketball are little more than history to the fans and students who must look to the rafters of the sterile RBC Center to discover that past greatness. The reminders are up there, in the retired hanging jerseys of players who once made the Wolfpack the premier program in the Triangle.

It’s hard to imagine that N.C. State was once superior to Duke and North Carolina, that there was a time when the Wolfpack had more national championships than the Blue Devils and as many as the Tar Heels. Or that games between North Carolina and N.C. State could be as raucous as the annual bashes between the Tar Heels and Duke are today.

These days, the famed Triangle is two pillars and a matchstick. That’s how far N.C. State has fallen behind in competition, recruiting and national recognition against its closest and most dearly hated Atlantic Coast Conference rivals.

“It’s frustrating that we haven’t been at the level of Carolina and Duke,” said Chris Corchiani, the point guard for the Wolfpack from 1988-91 who became the first player in NCAA history to total more than 1,000 assists. “Our fan base is an intelligent fan base and they’re a passionate fan base. We understand what’s going on and we want to be in the hunt every year, and it’s what’s so special about what we’ve got going on right now.”

 

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Tyrod Taylor Leads Virginia Tech to ACC Championship, Orange Bowl

December 04, 2010   Viv Bernstein   No comments

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Virginia Tech ACC Championship Florida State Tyrod TaylorCHARLOTTE, N.C. — Michael Vick may be the measure of greatness among Virginia Tech quarterbacks, but the legend of Tyrod Taylor is surely gaining on him.

As if to demonstrate why he was named the ACC player of the year in 2010, Taylor dominated Florida State in a 44-33 victory Saturday night in the ACC Championship Game at Bank of America Stadium. It was the 11th victory in a row for Virginia Tech, which opened the season 0-2, and puts the Hokies (11-2) in the BCS Orange Bowl. Florida State (9-4) will play in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl in Atlanta. The teams will learn their bowl opponents Sunday.

It wasn’t just the numbers — Taylor was 18 of 28 for 263 yards and three touchdowns, setting the Virginia Tech single-season record with 23 touchdown passes. And it wasn’t his deceptively pedestrian rushing stats, including a mere 24 net yards on 11 carries that hardly describes a perfectly devastating five-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.

Taylor, the ACC Championship Game MVP for the second time in his career, simply couldn’t be stopped by a defense that went into the game 11th in the country in points allowed per game at 17.8. Taylor and the Hokies had that topped by halftime with a 21-17 lead in a dominating offensive display that included 13 of 18 third-down conversions and 10 in a row in a stretch when Virginia Tech pulled away from a close game and made it a blowout in the second half.

“He’s just playing like one of the best, if not the best, in the country right now,” said Virginia Tech flanker Danny Coale, who had a career night with six catches for 143 yards and a touchdown. “I can’t wait to watch it again just to be a fan and watch some of the things that he did because he’s just remarkable. The holes he got us out of sometimes were great. I’m just so happy he’s my quarterback.”

 

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Virginia Tech Overcomes Awful Start to Earn Shot at Another ACC Title

December 03, 2010   Viv Bernstein   No comments

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Three months ago, when Virginia Tech debuted at No. 10 in the preseason college football top 25, the Hokies were the pick in the Atlantic Coast Conference and outside contenders for a national championship. Three months later, they are ranked No. 12 and the favorites to win the ACC title game Saturday night against Florida State at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.

But the road from 10 to 12 was hardly two steps back. It was more like two cliffs down. Virginia Tech opened the season with a loss to highly-ranked Boise State, followed by an embarrassing defeat to James Madison of the Football Championship Subdivision that dropped the Hokies out of the top 25 polls.

It was a fall so far that others might have given up on them. Except the Hokies never gave up on themselves.

And that might be the lesson to remember in this season of what might have been for Virginia Tech. When all seemed lost, the Hokies found a way to win again.

 

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Christian Ponder Won’t Win Heisman, But He’s Had Satisfying Season Thus Far

December 02, 2010   Viv Bernstein   No comments

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The Christian-Ponder-for-Heisman Twitter feed hasn’t uttered a tweet since Oct. 13, the Facebook page has moved on to more pressing subjects and the website has been devoid of news for months. All that preseason hype churned out by Florida State turned out to be nothing more than multimedia-platformed overkill.

It was a spiffy logo, though.

As it turns out, Ponder’s last season as quarterback of the Seminoles has been something less than Heisman material. And yet in many ways, this is the most satisfying year of his career at Florida State. Ponder will exit following this season knowing that he helped put the 20th-ranked Seminoles back on the national map.

That’s no small feat given the path this program has followed the last few years.

 

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Jason Benetti Is Voice of Hope in Face of Cerebral Palsy

November 23, 2010   Viv Bernstein   No comments

The voice is polished and professional, seamless and smooth. So much so that you might never imagine the person behind it.

Frankly, for most of his career as a sports play-by-play announcer, that’s the way Jason Benetti preferred it. He wanted to be just a voice. Not a face or a body for others to question and judge.

“I started to do this on radio because the inhibitions are gone,” Benetti said. “Everybody meets me for the first time on radio without having seen me.

“You hear a voice, he’s telling you what’s going on, you don’t know that person from the butcher or the milkman or your dog.”

Without seeing, without knowing, Benetti could be like everyone else. No one would stare at the bobbing gait of his walk and the lazy eye that cerebral palsy had left him with as a child. As long as he sounded the part on the air, that was all that was necessary. And he did.

Here’s what Sean McDonough, the longtime play-by-play broadcaster for ESPN, had to say when he listened to a tape of Benetti’s work: “I think he’s better than some guys who are in the major leagues right now.”

 

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N.C. State Seniors Own UNC

November 20, 2010   Viv Bernstein   No comments

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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Owen Spencer pounded his chest and pointed to the red-clad North Carolina State fans who had traveled the short trip down I-40 to see the Wolfpack play hated North Carolina on the Tar Heels’ hallowed turf.

It was a small but boisterous gathering in the corners of the stands amid the quiet, powder-blue masses filing out of Kenan Stadium in disappointment. Once again.

For the fourth year in a row, ownership of this rivalry belongs unequivocally to N.C. State.

“We can honestly say: This senior class, we never lost to Carolina,” Spencer said with more than a hint of satisfaction on his face after the Wolfpack’s stunning 29-25 comeback victory in the 100th game in the history of the rivalry.

More importantly for the immediate future, N.C. State also stayed in the hunt for the Atlantic Division title and a berth in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game Dec. 4 in Charlotte. If the Wolfpack wins at Maryland on Saturday in the regular season finale, N.C. State will clinch the division and that spot in the title game.

And a victory there would put N.C. State in the BCS Orange Bowl.

It’s an almost unimaginable turnabout for a program that hadn’t produced a winning season since 2005 or an eight-victory campaign since 2003. But with Saturday’s win, N.C. State is now 8-3 (5-2).

 

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Virginia Tech Beats UNC, Still Working Toward Consolation Prize

November 13, 2010   Viv Bernstein   No comments

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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Frank Beamer has always been unequivocal in his support of the Bowl Championship Series over a playoff system to determine a national champion in college football. But suddenly, conveniently, he’s hedging.

“Well, you know, I’ve always said I like the BCS,” the Virginia Tech coach said Saturday night. “This particular year, a playoff wouldn’t be bad.

“I wish we could get it to that, but I don’t see it changing anytime soon.”

Too bad. A championship playoff would have been Virginia Tech’s only chance to redeem itself nationally after being dismissed as a serious title contender following a season-opening loss to Boise State and an embarrassing defeat to James Madison of the underling Football Championship Subdivision.

Instead, Beamer and the Hokies will have to settle for chasing their annual consolation prize: another ACC championship and Orange Bowl bid. Virginia Tech took a significant step toward those secondary goals with a convincing 26-10 dismissal of North Carolina Saturday night at Kenan Stadium. Quarterback Tyrod Taylor threw for 249 yards and two touchdowns, both coming in the second half when the Hokies (8-2, 6-0 ACC) overcame a 10-9 halftime deficit to beat the Tar Heels (6-4, 3-3).

 

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