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So Billy Packer has been whacked and you can't contain your enthusiasm. If you're a college basketball fan, you probably feel an obligation to dance on Packer's professional grave.

Just make sure you control yourself. Limit your delirium to the specifics. The controversial commentator won't be working the Final Four, but Mr. Cash isn't about to cash out.

Packer, 68, has become one of the most financially successful ex-coaches in the game's history, and he has done it by seeing water where most of us presume there is only desert.

Everybody claims to be pursuing "other opportunities" when unemployment strikes. Packer's one of the few who can say it without averting his eyes and trying to change the subject.

Two decades ago, he partnered with Donald Trump, among others, to create an American cycling race. Known as the Tour de Trump in 1989 and '90, it became the only event to improve its name by selling out to corporate interests. The Tour DuPont operated with some success from 1991-96 found its legacy boosted when its final champion went on to win the Tour de France in seven straight years while beating cancer.

Back then, Lance Armstrong was little more than a 34-year-old Texan.

Among Packer's other ventures is miniature golf, which he actually managed to get on ESPN at one time. He hawked pickup trucks in a CBS-affiliated promotion at the Final Four several years ago. And who can forget Mr. Cash, the emergency-loan purveyor for whom he once made commercials?

The cycling fling gave me my first in-person exposure to Packer, who politely kicked me out of a closed-door meeting with potential investors in Virginia.

"I've never found the press to be particularly helpful in these things," he said.

That was the only time he ever told me to go away. Otherwise, he has always answered his phone and has been willing to express his opinion. On anything.

That has occasionally gotten him in trouble. The sexist comment rebuking a woman who asked for his credentials at a Duke game eight years ago comes to mind. But when the opinions are confined to the action, nobody offers swifter, more concise insight.

Of course, he has incited ire there, too. Billy Packer hates Carolina. He used to be an assistant coach for Bones McKinney at Wake Forest, you know. No, he hates Duke. And Kentucky. And St. Joseph's. Especially St. Joseph's. If you've got every fan base convinced you're conspiring with the enemy, you're probably doing something right. Specifically, your comments are probably governed by what you see rather than some veiled agenda to undermine.

Many of Packer's critics want things both ways. In one breath, they accuse CBS of shameless boosterism of the NCAA and its basketball tournament, citing the longstanding fiduciary relationship between the two. But when Packer chastised the selection committee for seeding St. Joe's second in the East region in 2004, he was called a bully, a mouthpiece for the power conferences and a callous foe of the gritty underdog. Few gave him credit for asking tough and legitimate questions.

Likewise, many blast him for declaring this year's Kansas-UNC national semifinal "over" in the first half. But did the Tar Heels ever tie the game? Was the Jayhawks' lead insufficient?

Criticism is the almost inevitable consequence of relative fame. One of Packer's former Final Four broadcast partners, Brent Musburger, was fired in 1990 largely because he had done his job so well that he was overexposed. Dick Vitale has been broadcasting with the same style for a quarter-century and nobody hated him until he became the face of ESPN. Then the hunting season began.

If he's willing to accept a role confined to the regular season, Packer will be scooped up faster than a crisp chest pass by some broadcast entity. And he should be. If he isn't, he'll find a way to keep himself occupied.

Contact Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rob.daniels @news-record.com