I couldn’t believe it. This guy is trying to convince us he likes this sport?

Obviously, Packer has forgotten what it’s like to be a college senior, knowing your playing days are coming to a close.

Ask most professional basketball millionaires and they’ll say the greatest times of their playing lives came in college. They remember not wanting that college experience to end.

But sometimes, a senior knows the end is near. And if his team doesn’t make the NCAA Tournament field of 64, it could all end with a thud without the NIT.

At least the NIT gives a senior a chance to play perhaps five more games in front of a good crowd.

For those reasons, I would thoroughly enjoy a conversation on the pros and cons of the NIT between Packer and Clemson head coach Larry Shyatt.

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You must understand why Shyatt is such a big NIT fan. He, perhaps more than anyone else in college coaching, can appreciate what it means to the players.

Clemson won 16 regular season games in Shyatt’s first year at the helm, but unlike a Dean Smith or Mike Krzyzewski, didn’t have the tradition or media clout to get Clemson an at-large bid to the Big Dance.

New Mexico, where he was an assistant coach before Clemson, won 21 games for six straight years and was never invited.

“Ifelt sorry for (then head coach) Gary Colson,” Shyatt says.

Had the NIT not been a reality last year, Shyatt would’ve been one depressed basketball coach. He had four seniors — Terrell McIntyre, Harold Jamison, Tom Wideman and Tony Christie — whose careers would have ended abruptly.

Instead, they made the most of a second chance and went all the way to Madison Square Garden for the NIT Final Four. The Tigers beat Xavier 79-76 in the semifinals before losing to California 61-60 in the title game.

Those four seniors thus concluded their careers with heads held high. No way did they feel like losers. Had there been no NIT, they would have.

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Listen to Shyatt and you wish Packer was there. If anything seems a bit jaded, it’s the way the 64-team NCAAfield is chosen.

“We’ve created this problem ourselves,” Shyatt told reporters at the recent Operation ACC basketball press conference in Greensboro. “We think that this field of 64 is where it’s at.

“It’s not.”

In the first round, he pointed out, there are point spreads between 30 and 50 points because so many small conferences get automatic bids. He considers the NCAA tourney a field of 44.

“I’ve heard the NIT is played for losers by losers,” he said. “But it’s really for teams 45 through 70.”

Would McIntyre, who hails from the small North Carolina town of Raeford, ever get a chance to play in Madison Square Garden again had it not been for the NIT? Would any of those seniors had the chance to walk the streets of Manhattan?

“As our seniors and JUCOplayers all found out, some wonderful things can happen,” Shyatt said. “Actually, it was nice to be one of four teams not to have taken inventory. It was terrific, not just for Clemson but for the state of South Carolina.”

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The fact remains, however, the first choice for Shyatt is the NCAAfield. And that’s why he must coach harder every season. Just because you coach in the mighty ACC, he points out, does not mean you can take it easy.

“I’ve coached 27 years but I feel we must improve ourselves,” he said. “It must trickle down to the players. No one works for me. We must have the attitude that we all work for Clemson and serve as role models.”

Shyatt loves the competition of the ACC but the travel is much better than it was with New Mexico in the Western Athletic Conference.

“At least, in this league, when you go on the road, you’re home the next day,” he said. “In the WAC, it’s eight states and Hawaii. Here, you’re not leaving on a Wednesday morning and returning on a Sunday night. And we only miss three classes, thank God, in this league. That takes the pressure off the players, not adds to it.”

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The play is a bit different too.

“This is the greatest basketball league in the world,” he said. “I mean, Georgia Tech goes from ninth to first to ninth. No other league in America is that seen. It’s a bottomless league. Everybody at one time or another is a Top 20 team.

“But yet, they’ll run over you in a glass-bottomed truck and watch you die.”

Clemson could’ve died last year without the NIT.

Maybe Packer just doesn’t get it because he knows his invitation to the Big Dance each and every year is brought to him courtesy of CBS.

Maybe CBS should tell Packer that next season, the analyst’s job will be between him and Clark Kellogg. There will be a committee that sits in a hotel room and decides his fate behind closed doors. Maybe Packer would be told he’s calling a first-round NIT game.

And maybe, just maybe, Packer could come down off his pedestal and realize what a great game basketball is, regardless of a tournament’s initials.

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