He forgets players' numbers.

He'd rather not rely heavily on instant replay.

He's a walking conflict of interest.

And that's only what Billy Packer says about himself.

As he prepares to work his 34th consecutive NCAA Final Four in college basketball -- a championship record in any sport that CBS partner Jim Nantz predicts will last forever -- Packer doesn't even consider himself a professional broadcaster. His role as the college game's senior spokesman qualifies as merely a "neat segment" in a richly compartmentalized life.

His television career "is not what he does," says his younger brother, Dick.

At 68, Billy Packer is still looking for the next good deal. He's made millions of dollars outside television, much of it in real estate, more than enough to walk away from the microphone whenever he chooses. He's a political junkie who'd just as soon talk about a campaign as he would a season. He collects art, with a particular fondness for Picasso ceramic plates.

Still, he loves to prepare for a game, the studying it takes, as if again measuring himself against other players and coaches, against the game itself. In pregame mode, he shuts out all else. He compartmentalizes.

"Like, if you like a subject in school, to prepare for the test is not a job, it's fun to learn and understand it," Packer says in an interview at his home in Charlotte. "And then when the test comes, it's fun to compete with the other kids in the class, and then when the test comes back, it's fun to get an A.

"To me, that's what broadcasting is."

As soon as the game ends, it's gone, out of his head. He couldn't tell you the starting lineups in a game he worked three days ago.

"I tune that out and don't tune it back in until I'm ready to be in that part of my life again," he says. "I don't sit around daydreaming about basketball all day long."

That helps explain why, after so many years, he hasn't lost his passion for the sport. In whatever daydreams he does allow himself, he hasn't heard a final buzzer yet.

"I know I would definitely not do another game if ... two things were involved," Packer says. " No. 1, I wasn't properly prepared, or at least somebody could prepare better, and No. 2, when I got there I didn't want to be there.

"I don't know how you could fake that. And I'm not talking about the fans. It'd be easy to fake it to the fans and to the listeners. But to yourself ..."

After all, Billy Packer really answers to himself.

The Packer haters

At a point when other broadcasting icons could expect to soak up the adulation of lifelong listeners, Packer takes more hits than a dartboard in a crowded bar. He is described variously as a cranky, inflexible, arrogant old man who's out of touch with the modern game, humorless and unwilling to admit he's wrong.

Google Packer's name, and the Internet search engine spits back a stream of venom.

"CBS -- Please remove Billy Packer from the airwaves," a petition posted by a fellow Wake Forest alumnus, pops up just above CBS' official bio.

Scroll down a couple of spots, and you get to the Awful Announcing Web site's article, "Billy Packer Could Take The Joy Out of Sex," from where it's easy to spot ACC BasketBlog's "Billy Packer Hatred" page.

Packer's Q Score of 13 -- his "likeability" rating -- put him 33rd of 37 sports announcers last year, according to Marketing Evaluations Inc., which annually surveys fans to measure sports figures' familiarity and appeal.

Forrest Maready, the Wake Forest graduate who posted the Packer petition about four years ago, says about 5,300 Web users have "signed" it. A 36-year-old advertising designer in Durham, Maready gives the impression that he's a thoughtful college basketball fan, not prone to obscenity-laced rants, more frustrated than angry.

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