Put up your Dooks: Rivalry goes Hollywood
This week's column.
Way back when, during my junior year in Chapel Hill, the phone rang one night in my dorm room.
It was Dean Smith.
The coach of the Tar Heels had called to answer a few questions for a story I was reporting for a campus magazine.
Frankly, I hadn’t expected the callback. But here he was, much more gracious than you’d expect from a Hall of Fame basketball coach granting time to some faceless English major writing an article.
Why didn’t Carolina schedule historically black Division 1 basketball schools in the state, such as N.C. A&T? I asked. Smith didn’t hesitate.
“The fact is, we don’t schedule any other schools in the state other than ACC schools,” he said. “We’ve got enough rivals as it is.”
He was right; that was the policy at Carolina in the 1970s, although it has long since been dropped. And Carolina does tend to get every opponent’s "A game."
But I wonder if he even suspected then that one of those in-state rivalries would grow to far overshadow all the rest.
That conversation came to mind as I previewed the new HBO sports documentary, “Battle for Tobacco Road: Duke vs. Carolina.” The one-hour film debuts Monday at 9 p.m. and hits nothing but net in its depiction of the hot-blooded enmity between the two neighbors . You name it, they’ve got it:
• Footage from memorable games.
• Interviews with J.J. Redick, Charlie Scott, Grant Hill, Eric Montross, Christian Laettner, Woody Durham, Jay Bilas, Michael Jordan and even the Durham barbers who cut Duke and Carolina players’ hair.
• Spicy recollections of the testy relations between Duke and Carolina coaches, including the time Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski told Smith to Dick Cheney himself.
For any Duke or Carolina fan, this documentary is a mother lode of hoop dreams. But it does make me a little wistful.
I attended Carolina for six years, counting undergraduate and graduate school. And I got to see my share of classic games in old Carmichael Auditorium — Maryland Coach Lefty Driesell hefting his fist at the crowd and vowing revenge after a narrow loss on a controversial noncall.
An N.C. State player with the soulful name of Al Green, hitting free throws after time expired to beat the favored Heels.
But as a student I never saw Duke-Carolina in person, even watching the famous eight-points-in-17-seconds comeback game (March 2, 1974) from my dorm room while folding laundry (major bummer).
I (theoretically) saved the trips to Carmichael for the biggest games. And those usually weren’t Carolina-Duke. At least back then.
In those days, we hated Wolfpack red a lot more than Duke blue.
We hated State Coach Norm Sloan prowling the sidelines in his horrid “lucky” plaid jacket and banana-yellow bellbottoms.
We hated the little Pack point guard and kewpie lookalike, Monte Towe, coolly hitting all those long jump shots.
We hated Pack superstar David Thompson, who could leap so high he once tripped over another player’s shoulder.
And after we finished hating State, we turned our utter disdain to Virginia and Ralph Sampson and UVa’s, snitty coach, Terry Holland — who famously named his dog Dean.
Of course, that was before Krzyzewski came along, and made Duke-Carolina the all-consuming war between Good and Evil that it is today.
Coach K. started eating Dean’s lunch in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His teams got so talented that we couldn’t help but despise them, especially when he threw characters like pretty-faced bad boy Christian (“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful”) Laettner into the mix.
An ESPN poll ranks Duke-Carolina as the third greatest North American sports rivalry of all time. I’d argue (not without some bias) that it’s No. 1. Rarely are two bitter enemies so geographically close and so consistently dominant.
My only regret is that the phenomenon was only beginning to take shape during my student days. As the filmmakers note, Duke-UNC is much bigger than two campuses or a state or a conference. “This is a backyard game played on a national stage.”
A Duke loyalist solemnly declares in the film, “I would root for the minions of hell before I’d root for Carolina.” (Same to you, sister.)
But as much as fans from both programs love to revel in the other’s adversity, we all know the truth: Duke and Carolina need each other. And they need each other to be good. There is something missing on those rare seasons when one of the programs isn’t.
As satisfying as it might seem to be to kick your mortal enemy when he’s down, it’s sheer heaven to kick him when he’s at his very best.
Comments (2)
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UNC-CH and the other UNC schools need to concentrate on academics and get rid of of the sports teams.
College sports, the biggest taxpayer and student rip-off around.
Posted on February 22, 2009 7:23 AM
Oh but the money it brings in.
Biggest rip off! Liberal professors!
Like the Duke 88.
Are the one that gave a student a failing grade, because he was on the lacrosse team!
This crap does not make the liberal media.
So you may not know about it.
Posted on February 22, 2009 8:52 AM