RT @kevinheaslip Every good story has to have a hero and an enemy. Harry Potter had Voldemort. Butler has the evil Dook. [if both win semis]
RT @kevinheaslip Every good story has to have a hero and an enemy. Harry Potter had Voldemort. Butler has the evil Dook. [if both win semis]
Duke is, in fact, the hallmark of what college basketball should be, and USC should aspire to be Duke.
Prove me wrong.
I’m still waiting…..
I understand why people might hate USC or Notre Dame football, Yankee baseball, or Cowboys or Patriots football. But Duke basketball? Coach K has done everything right and clean, he’s been an Olympic coach for this country, Duke is a solid academic school just a notch outside of the Ivy League, and their players play as a team and stay out of trouble. I understand people being sick of them being in the Final Four every year in the 1990s, but in the 2000s, they have not had nearly as much success, nor have they consumed the amount of TV oxygen as UNC, Kansas, Kentucky, Florida, Memphis, and some other big-time programs recently. They are hardly cocky, and their fans are not nearly as obnoxious as, ahem, USC football fans.
Simply put, when it comes to basketball, USC should aspire to be Duke.
I don’t view sports as a morality play, never have. So I don’t give a poop whether Duke “does things the right way.” I hate Duke because they knocked my then-favorite team, UConn, out of the tournament in brutal, heartbreaking fashion in 1990, two days after the first college basketball game I ever watched… then did it again in 1991. And although UConn exacted its revenge in 1999, which had the potential to dull the pain of my 1990 and 1991 memories much like the 2004 ALCS comeback took much of the sting off the memory of Aaron F***ing Boone, Duke then proceeded to reinvigorate my hatred by knocking USC out in 2001.
Rationally, I don’t necessarily disagree with your thesis. Irrationally, f*** Duke! (But, uh, beat West Virginia first. Then lose to Butler. kthxbye)
I hated North Carolina for knocking out USC a few years back far more than I was upset with Duke in 2001. Beyond that, UConn and Duke are nowhere near rivals like the Yankees and Red Sox, so your Boone analogy makes little sense.
And it’s not about “morality”, it’s about being the best of what collegiate men’s basketball has to offer.
If you were handed the keys of any basketball program and were asked to make the program the pinnacle to which all programs would aspire, notwithstanding regional or alumni ties, which program would you choose and why? I don’t know how you don’t choose Duke. Maybe Stanford (or Notre Dame, if you want to play up the national Catholic interest angle), but relative to Duke, that’s a bit of a rebuilding project.