March 03, 2006, 8:43 a.m.
Powder-Blue Heaven
And navy-blue hell.

By Alston B. Ramsay

I'm a Tar Heel born, I'm a Tar Heel bred, and when I die I'm a Tar Heel dead. So ra-ra, Carolina-lina, ra-ra, Carolina-lina, ra-ra, Carolina-lina, GO TO HELL DUKE!

I hate Duke basketball. And I hate Mike Krzyzewski.

This is not your garden-variety hatred, something you utter with the gravity of a helium balloon. This is a hatred pure of heart, uncorrupted by the sophistries of reason and reasonableness. Its taproot is deep within my soul, in a place where only those ancient bestial emotions lurk. Whenever I see Krzyzewski stomping up and down the Duke bench — face contorted in rage, twisted by arrogance, those glirine eyes darting obsessively to and fro as he gesticulates with a pomposity only he can muster — a red glaze comes over my vision, an animalistic rage wells from my primal id. I imagine myself endowed with psychic powers: If I concentrate hard enough perhaps he will falter, his team suffer some terrible reversal of fortunes, or, at the very least, that sneer will be wiped from his face for just a moment.

Some people would call my hatred of Duke pathological — probably true — but it is merely the flip side of my obsession with Carolina basketball: To love Carolina is to hate Duke. Good only really exists in comparison with something else, a contrapositive Evil against which it can be measured. Carolina basketball is everything that is right in the world. Duke basketball is everything that is wrong.

Surely this is an exaggeration. Not so: Down on Tobacco Road, in the rolling foothills of North Carolina's piedmont, a mere eight miles as the crow flies will take you from Durham to Chapel Hill, where all week the fever pitch has swollen as the two premier programs in college basketball prepare to face off for the second time this season. Duke stole the first game in Chapel Hill; now the vendetta is again ripe, the blood feud boiling. All of North Carolina is in a frenzy, as are the Carolina fans spread far and wide across the country. Saturday night's game will end the diaspora temporarily, and everyone will, in his heart, be back in the state that stretches from Murphy to Manteo. Grown men and women will grind their teeth alongside their children, claw at their pillows, and follow whatever mad pre-game ritual preceded Carolina's last victory. Maybe, just maybe, it will have a small effect on the cosmic forces that determine the course of these things.

In North Carolina, college basketball is no mere pastime; it is a way of life, an intersection of politics, passions, friends, and family, a commingling of obsession and idolatry. And the Carolina-Duke rivalry takes it to another level: the Southern university versus the Northern one (that happens to be in the South); the University of the People versus a priggish private school. It is, in short, a touchstone of culture for North Carolina fans, a worldview interwoven with childhood memories, contemporary personalities, and dreams of the future.

And it can drive one to craziness. I recently canceled a date with a girl I had been interested in for five years, so that I could watch a regular-season, run-of-the-mill game. (I did invite her to tag along.) I once considered voting for a Democrat — after Mike Krzyzewski came out in favor of Elizabeth Dole (a Duke alumna for whom I was working at the time), and Carolina's legendary, erstwhile Dean Smith declared for Erskine Bowles (a UNC alumnus). Oh, how my heart was torn, my spirit wracked! (Senator Dole did mend old wounds by cosponsoring a Senate resolution commending the 2005 national champion Tar Heels.) Again I was tested when, my senior year in college, I desperately wanted to date a lass who pulled for Duke; that relationship died inchoate — and I am thankful.

Of course, any true fan could tell similar stories, and there exists a vast library of books on the rivalry and its web of personalities. Harvard Business School even teaches about the leadership style of Mike Krzyzewski. One hopes the teacher is a disinterested party, for if he is not, I imagine the lecture goes something like this: Krzyzewski is a maniacal self-promoter — his official website even includes a page with quotes by him. And who can forget the cloying American Express TV spots from last year, or the Chevrolet ones that debuted simultaneously? Maybe the teacher would even parrot an Amazon.com reviewer's comments on Mike Krzyzewski's book account of his 2000-2001 championship season: "I began to think that flushing the book would be disrespectful to the floating excrement."

On the other hand, Roy Williams — Carolina's current coach, the inheritor of Dean Smith's leadership and coaching legacy — is his polar opposite. He is self-effacing and mirthful; he concerns himself primarily with his players; he peppers his press conferences with Southern colloquialisms (daggum is his favorite). His sheepish grin, coupled with a Southern drawl, paints a sharp contrast to Krzyzewski's angular face and twangy nasal inflections (not to mention the nascent horns I swear I see every once in a while). Williams is a Southern gentleman, a fine coach and teacher; Krzyzewski is a ruthless, heartless competitor, who will lie, steal, and cheat to win games. Roy is a man; Krzyzewski is a beast.

Hyperbole, probably: On a cerebral level, the utter loathing the rivalry fuels is to a large degree intangible; the more one tries to pinpoint the source, the more elusive it becomes, like a phantom waving in a gay spring breeze. I have met some Duke fans I like — though I did not want to like them — and I acknowledge that Krzyzewski is a masterful coach, and, I hesitate to say, probably a good man.

But the hatred is real. Maybe it is the nature of college basketball: The young men have not, for the most part, been corrupted by the river of cash so corrosive to any endeavor of the heart. Every game matters, and thus is played out at a frenetic pace: the passion and the vicissitudes and the innocence of youth. Real life rarely hinges on a single moment — deadlines come slowly, triumphs and failures seep in over time — so there's rarely that ephemeral instant when fate hangs in the balance. But college basketball: The game can — and often does — come down to that do-or-die instant, when the tiniest imperfection in the arc of the ball or the slightest twitch of a finger will determine the game, and maybe even the season. To be swept away in those moments is to live on a different plane of existence, and Carolina-Duke, the apotheosis of rivalry, always exists on that plane.

People may witness the passion — it's difficult not to when a Carolina fan is screaming in your ear — but they don't understand or feel it: the cultural implications, the deep-seated emotional triggers built up from a lifetime lived with the Tar Heels. In North Carolina, years are measured by the ebbs and flows of the basketball gods. How was Carolina's team when you learned to walk? Who started the year you had your first kiss? How far in the tournament did we go after you were fired from your job? I worshipped the players growing up, but, now, the surreal reality is that I am much older than they are. Maturity probably dictates that I outgrow my obsession, but I have not listened to maturity. And neither have tens of thousands of geriatrics, who will still be screaming at the TV from their nursing-home beds. I still worship the Carolina players.

There have always been great wars and rivalries in the realm of human affairs — stories that echo through the ages and heroes whose names continue to whisper on the winds of time. The rage of Achilles was the blink of an eye, the siege of Troy a mere ten years. Napoleon fought for less than fifteen years. The U.S.S.R. collapsed in the face of the United States after two score. The Thirty Years' War? Please. Carolina and Duke have been battling it out on the basketball court for over eighty years.

And Saturday night, in a carnal frenzy, the two teams will again face each other: forty minutes, back and forth across ninety-four feet of hardwood, the hopes and prayers of hundreds of thousands pinned on every shot, every foul, every possession. In the end it may come down to one play, a split second that will last an eternity . . . and if Carolina wins, Tar Heel fans will know true bliss, the warm thrill of total consciousness that blooms like a rose.

And if they lose — well, stay away from me on Sunday.

— Alston B. Ramsay is an associate editor at National Review. He is a Tar Heel born, a Tar Heel bred, and when he dies he will be a Tar Heel dead.

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