Courtesy New York Newsday

(March 17, 2009) No one under 40 remembers this, but trust me, there was a time when they played the Final Four without Billy Packer at the mike - most recently in 1974.

David Thompson of North Carolina State ruled college basketball, there were 25 entrants in the NCAAs and Clark Kellogg was in grade school in Cleveland.

Now Kellogg, 47, is all grown up - all 6-7 of him - and next month in Detroit he will sit alongside Jim Nantz in the seat Packer filled for decades.

Even after two decades in broadcasting and 12 years in the CBS studio, he never will have experienced anything like it.

"I can't tell you how I'm going to react emotionally," he said. "It's much like when I did my first Final Four as a studio analyst in 1997 - the magnitude, the significance. I had no idea what to expect."

Kellogg is not expecting a primer from Packer. As of the middle of last week, he said he had not spoken to his predecessor since being told in the fall of 2007 he would replace Packer after that season.

No words of advice or encouragement or simple well wishes?

"No, no, no," Kellogg said. "But he has been very kind in his comments publicly about me ... I have great respect for him, and I know he feels the same about me. Change is inevitable."

The fact 2007-08 would be the last season for Packer, 69, was known to a small group of CBS staffers, who somehow kept it from leaking.

Packer had insisted he wanted to leave without fanfare, and from the day I first discussed it with him in July until now he staunchly has declined to get emotional or nostalgic. He moved on, to a new project - a TV show (seen locally on MSG Plus) and Web site called "Survive and Advance."

Friends say Packer's stoicism is for real, and even if it isn't, it has helped the network seamlessly move on.

No one was better at dissecting and anticipating strategy, but Packer's perceived humorlessness, serial controversies and lapses into referencing ancient coaches and players wore on some viewers, especially young ones.

Enter Kellogg, who stylistically should offer a middle ground in the vast Dick Vitale-to-Billy Packer continuum. He mostly is calm, but he can pick his spots.

Late in last year's final, Jim Nantz and Packer barely mentioned Memphis' disastrous failure to foul to avoid Kansas' tying three-point try. Back in the studio, Kellogg hammered the Tigers.

Speaking about it last week, he still was incensed.

"I have got some major pet peeves and you'll hear me express them in an animated, strong fashion - and that's a huge one," he said. "Five seconds or under up three, you foul! You foul! I don't understand.

"All [coaches] tell me is what could go wrong. Well, what could go right?"

Kellogg is less apt to use jargon than Packer, and less apt to make headlines.

"I'm not looking to stir things up," he said. "I don't begrudge anyone else's style, but I'm not interested in majoring in minor stuff, in filling airwaves with my voice.

"I am very game focused. I'm not interested in being the show, and Billy was the same way. The game is the show."

Nantz, Packer's partner since 1991, said he still thinks of him during games. But he added the transition has been seamless.

"In all my years working with someone for the first time, it was the smoothest, easiest, first-time-out-of-the-box broadcast I've ever had," Nantz said. "I knew from the first time we hit the under-16 timeout on Georgetown and Memphis [in December] that this was going to be all right."

Kellogg's mother gave him a plaque early in his marriage that he keeps in mind professionally.

"In essence it talks about not having the right partner, but being the right partner," he said.

Kellogg might never have chosen this path had his career with the Pacers not been limited to five years by knee trouble.

"I thought I'd play a long time at a high level then move into being some kind of entrepreneur," he said. "When I didn't play as long as I had hoped I had a lot of basketball in me."

Most current players only know him as an announcer. Last season Kellogg, who has done voice-overs for video games, introduced himself to Michael Beasley at a Kansas State game.

"He walks by and says, 'Hey, you're the dude in the video game,"' he said. "I just chuckled. That's the frame of reference some kids have. That's fine. It's an unending cycle, and it's fun to still be in it."