Ah, the last day of March. Finally we’re toward the end of time of year that’s always full of cognitive dissonance for me – college basketball season. I grew up in ACC country, and therefore I’m supposed to be completely obsessed with college basketball, but I’ve always been more aware than really invested. I don’t really have a strong tie to any one team. My mom’s from Georgia, so I liked Georgia Tech growing up. I grew up practically next door to Wake Forest, so there’s that. One sister is a die-hard Dukie, and another went to N.C. State. I guess the strongest affiliation my family has is this: we all hate Carolina.
That’s still more cognitive dissonance. It’s the flagship of my home state’s public university system, and one of the best basketball programs in the country. But… no. I think I’d pull for Newt Gingrich before I’d pull for Carolina. Sure, they’ve got an excellent program. It’s hard to explain without sounding like straight-up bitter hater, which I’m not. I have dear friends who went to Carolina, and I respect Dean Smith and even Roy Williams, who's developed this freakily effective Gump/ninja style of coaching.
When I was a kid, it was almost a form of entertainment to see how Tarheel fans would contort themselves to avoid admitting that any loss was due to the team just being outplayed. Tarheel fans seem to live in an alternate reality where UNC Chapel Hill is still a scrappy public school that draws its players only from who’s available in-state, when the reality is that virtually no Division I program operates that way anymore. When a Duke player declares for the NBA draft, he’s a rat deserting a sinking ship; when Harrison Barnes does the same thing, it’s all “Godspeed,” like he’s going off to do mission work in Africa or something. Tarheels are all humble, salt of the earth academic scholars and Duke is a humanoid laboratory, at least until it’s time to point out how many UNC alums go on the NBA vs. Duke alums. (That one really gets me… you’re basically bragging about your college being a farm program and ridiculing a university that has the gall to actually admit qualified student athletes and educate them.)
Recently, just after Duke’s exit from the men’s NCAA tournament, a Carolina fan said to me, about Duke, “They’re smart and they’re rich – they don’t get to be good at basketball, too.” And I thought, have you looked in the mirror??? That’s when it clicked for me.
The reason I’ve always disliked Carolina and many of their fans isn’t that they’re snobs, because they aren't, universally – it’s that the ones who are huge snobs won’t admit that they’re snobs. It’s the hypocrisy. Every single thing that Carolina fans list as reasons to dislike Duke are true about Carolina, too. Sure, at one time UNC was the public university that welcomed academically gifted and driven students regardless of need, but that time’s long fracking gone. UNC is one of the most elite and selective colleges in this country, and that’s great for our region’s economy. But you don’t get to act like you’re still some backwater cow college going up against a deep-pocketed Goliath.You ARE Goliath. Put down your gourmet Franklin Street dinner and own it.
And then I thought… where have I heard this before? What other group do I regularly encounter that lives in an alternate reality and can’t admit its own privilege? Carolina fans and Republicans aren’t totally a 1:1, but there are some commonalities. Someone who thinks that a team with multiple national championships is an underdog to anyone is likely to get along swimmingly with the person who thinks that earning $200,000 a year makes one middle class, is all I’m saying.
When I was growing up, the kids who got away with murder because of where they lived and who their parents were – all Carolina grads (and people who pretended to be). When I see a certain shade of powder blue, all it does is make me put up my guard. Maybe not nine times, but a good 7.5 times out of 10, I know I’m going to run up against a person who didn’t grow up in a household where nice Christmas presents and multi-day vacations were ever in doubt; who unironically throws around terms like “up by the bootstraps;” and who doesn’t even get that the best that most people in this state can hope for is just to look through the glass at all those championship trophies.
I’m always relieved when “March Madness” is over. It means at least a short time of relief until football season starts, and at least I can remind these smug Powderheads about this.
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