Duke

Long story short: blog has been silent for the past two weeks because I didn't have the InterWebs at home. Now I do. Regular blogging to resume shortly. In the meantime, I managed to score a ticket to the 1st round NCAA games yesterday. Saw Duke barely beat Belmont. Here's the thing: the crowd was so anti-Duke they booed the cheerleaders.

Read that again: they BOOED THE CHEERLEADERS. Who does that? Sure, Belmont is a great story. Boo our basketball players. But our cheerleaders? Jeez...

A ruined post

A couple of weekends ago I went to see the UW/Pitt basketball game. The UW arena is a nice little gym that reminds everyone of Cameron, only with no sense of history or awe. What was memorable about the game for me was that our seats were row 2, mid court. This is how the 2nd half started:

There's no zoom on that shot. They were just that close. It was pretty cool.

Anyways, the blog post is ruined because Pitt, after surviving a last second scare against UW, beat Duke tonight. During the game my friends (also Duke alums) and I observed that Pitt, while not great, is exactly the kind of team that would give Duke fits. They're big, slow, and rebound like crazy. Spurs vs. Suns.

I will give the UW fans some credit, as they made several "taser" cheers when the Pitt point guard shot free throws. It would seem he got tased, bro, this summer back in Pittsburgh. Taser or not, the guy is pretty clutch; he reminds me of Khalid El-Amin (fat, Duke-killer). He beat Duke on a crazy 3-pointer tonight, and made some tough free throws at the end of the UW game. I even had a picture of one:

Hard days work

I wish I had some pictures to share, because it would make telling this story a whole lot easier. That's not entirely true... there isn't much of a story here. I spent today experiencing a real college football game, which not only includes an actual game but 2+ hours of pre-game tailgating, another couple hours of post-game tailgating, and finally wrapping up with a traffic-filled bus/car ride home.

Being a Duke alum I never really experienced real college football. Sure, we played Florida State and other actual football teams, but I think we won 9 games during my four years. The whole Duke football experience was so lame that students didn't even bother to drink at their dorms before walking 1/4 mile to the stadium, where tickets were free. It was awful. There is no debating that Duke has the worst Division 1 football program in America.* Basketball made up for it at the time, but now that I'm out of college I feel I missed something that most of my friends didn't.

So when I buddy from work offered up a ticket to the UW/Ohio State game I snapped it up. We were able to find a tailgate, albeit with Ohio State fans. Brats, sausages, grilled onions, bean salad, enough brownies to kill a horse... it was a veritable feast. Oh, and there may have been some beer. I love that the police can't/won't do anything about people walking around with keg cups, but they take extreme offense if you are standing around with an actual beer can. Is that what our public safety officers have been relegated to? Making me put it in a cup?

Anyhoo, the only thing more fun than a pre-game tailgate is a post-game tailgate, especially when the tailgate host's team won. UW gave OSU a fight for 30 minutes, but they didn't have enough in the tank to pull it out. I barely had enough in the tank to finish out the tailgate and make it home. Some of us leave it all on the field. And some of us leave it all in the parking lot.

* Holy S***! Duke WINS! First win against a real team in 3 years! Woo-hoo!

I'm starting to hate Duke

In his professional blog Huan does a nice job explaining why this is the one of the worst pieces of sports-writing in 2007. Or ever.

I struggle to find words to describe how upset this makes me. Part of being a Duke fan is recognizing that people hate Duke. If you can't deal with that singular fact then you probably shouldn't be running a website dedicated to cheering on Duke basketball. And you certainly shouldn't write long essays explaining (incorrectly) why people hate Duke.

In case you don't know, here is why people hate Duke:

1. The hating started in the early 90s after the back-to-back championships (think Yankees) and the Laettner stomp. While DBR would have you believe that the stomp wasn't that big of a deal, they miss the whole point. Perception is that Laettner did it on purpose (he probably did); it doesn't matter whether Timberlake was hurt or not. It was a jerk thing to do, and thence started Duke hating.
2. The hate grew in the mid-90s as Coach K started appearing in sanctimonious TV ads and Vitale/ESPN started to broadcast every Duke game. I mean every game. We've been overexposed for a decade. As a fan this doesn't bother me, as it saves me from buying ESPN's college channel. But if something annoys you, and then you see it all the time, well, it probably annoys you even more.
3. The past 10 years have seen Coach K appear in even preachier ads, a resurgence of talent that reinforced the Yankees image, and Battier the flopper. I don't mind K doing the ads... I'd eat glass and live in a barn for a year to get an Amex deal. But the fact that DBR completely ignores his polarizing effect when "analyzing" Duke-hating is just ignorant. Also, I have no beef with Battier... he's a great person, great basketball player, etc. But people didn't like him because they thought he got all the calls. Deal with it.

So DBR needs to understand that the downside of success is that people don't always love a winner. What's especially sad about the essay is that it papers over a very interesting point: why has the hatred toward Duke grown vitriolic? I would feel safe walking down Franklin Street in full Duke gear... there's always been some level of respect between UNC and Duke. But I'd be terrified to even mention that I was a Duke fan in College Park. When VCU knocked Duke out of this year's tournament the entire bar was cheering loudly against Duke (not really for VCU). In Seattle. There were reports of journalist at neutral sites cheering Duke's loss. This is a new, somewhat disturbing trend. One that would be interesting to explore. Unfortunately DBR just whined.

So, in the spirit of Stephen Colbert, I've decided that DBR is dead to me. I can find other sources of recruiting information, and if I really feel like I need to talk to a homer I'll call Jordan, who is still convinced that Duke will go undefeated last year.