A Tale of Two Fans: Friendship at the Edge of Reason
6 February 2007
We’re friends, but February and March are kind of hard for us. Here are our stories of fandom.
Trey: The Duke Fan
All my life I’ve been a basketball fan. I don’t know exactly what it is about the game that draws me in, but drawn in I am, like a moth to a bug light. I started playing basketball competitively in the 5th grade and I’ve been playing ever since. I can’t count the thousands of jump shots I put up in the driveway at my mom and dad’s house and now as my wife Laura and I discuss building a new home one of my secret ambitions is to have room for an outdoor goal again.
Like all kids growing up in my era I was drawn in by Michael Jordan and the later years of Larry Bird. These guys were not only technicians on the floor that could pick you apart with their skill, but they were also masters of the mental game. Bird was like a chess player, moving players around until he found an opening and then he went for the kill, making the brilliant pass or the clutch shot. Jordan was an acrobat, flying through the air untouchable. I wanted to be these guys, or more accurately, I wanted to play like them. So in the summer of 1988 my mom and dad sent me to basketball camp at David Lipscomb under the tutelage of Don “Meat Roller” Meyer and as a special guest at camp that year was the head coach of Duke University, Mike Krzyzewski, and that is were our story begins.
After basketball camp that year, running drills and sets under the watchful eye and direction of Coach K and Coach Meyer, I started following Duke basketball, and what I thought was a passion for basketball was only getting fired up. As the years have passed my loyalty to Duke and the way their program is run and the way they play basketball has only grown and the venom for their arch rival UNC has only grown stronger.
Every basketball fan knows the story, I mean how could you not, The Battle of Tobacco Road, Duke vs. UNC, two of the most storied programs in NCAA history with 7 national championships. With 14 and 16 final four appearances respectively in the last 25 years. The schools are 8 miles apart, it’s a private university vs. the public university, light blue vs. dark blue, and in the eyes of many fans it’s just plain ol’ Good vs. Evil mixed with a touch of Democracy vs. Communism and according to William Blythe in his book To Hate Like This is to Be Happy Forever it is “the life force vs. the death instinct”. My friends of course don’t understand, they don’t understand what it is about the games that have me cursing the refs and pacing the floor and really there is no way to explain it, all I know is that my very soul hangs in the balance of this rivalry, and it has taken a spiritual toll on me. They wonder why I could care so much about a game that isn’t even played in the state I live in. Seeing as how I’m from Tennessee and not from North Carolina I am assured that there is an aspect of the rivalry that I miss out on, which I’m sure is true. It’s sort of the outsiders vs. the state kids aspect. Duke being a private university has a lot of out of state students and athletes whereas UNC is more of the kids that have grown up there. Being an outsider myself I can see how I miss out on this aspect of the emotions that have built this game into the biggest rivalry in sports.
For all the competitiveness that is between us though, I really believe that UNC fans and us Dukies have more in common than we think, the main thing being that these games are compulsory, like a thunderstorm we all go through it together and we understand each other better than possibly anyone else can. I know that when Duke wins, say on a last second defensive stand like 2 years ago, or in the famous overtime game from 2004 I feel my heart rise, my soul sings and I am filled with the sunshine of all of God’s creation, I also know that UNC fans feel like Eeyore on a bad day and refute the very existence of anything good or right in the universe. How do I know that? Because it’s exactly how I feel over a Duke loss. Like the double overtime loss at home in 1995 or the loss at home in the March game last year. Maybe though, just maybe, it’s not until you’ve lost that one great love that you know what love is.
The old story goes that the end of tobacco farming season coincided with the beginning of basketball season, so the farmers would entertain themselves indoors at basketball games and later on in front of the TV set. It’s a haunting but comforting feeling to know that since 1920, basketball fans just like me have cheered and jeered their way to joy or despair at the hands of two basketball teams. From idle chatter at the dinner table to grocery store checkout lines this rivalry lives and it’s time you picked sides. But choose wisely my friends, the very fate of the universe hangs in the balance.
Kari: The UNC Fan
I don’t know if people who live in other places love their states the way I love North Carolina. I have never lived anywhere else. It’s in my blood, though, as cheesy as it sounds. I know my mother feels the same way, though I’ve never heard her say it. We love this state, everything about it. The mountains, the foothills, the beaches. The cities and farms. And in North Carolina, that means loving basketball as well. College basketball, to be exact.
I am not sure exactly how my mom chose her basketball team. Three of her four brothers attended NC State. Two of them graduated from there. The other brother . . . well, he went to Carolina. I don’t know what made her decide to be a Carolina fan rather than an NC State fan. Both teams were winning a lot then, so it was just a matter of choosing one. Whatever it was, she passed it down to me. She told me all about Dean Smith and the Carolina Way (praising the seniors and keeping the freshman in check) and Four Corners and Michael Jordan. She told me that we are a Carolina family. And I believed her, I ate it up. My blood bleeds as (light) blue as hers. My brother is not much of a sports fan, and my dad, well, I’ll get to him in a minute. But basketball, for me, is a mother-daughter event.
My mom played basketball in high school, and there’s a story about how, in a close game, she was fouled at the last second and her free throws won the game. My mom still has the newspaper clipping from that game, and my dad used to claim that she would make him kiss it every night before bed. For a young girl with no discernible athletic talent, that’s pretty heady stuff – my mom was a superstar in my eyes. Of course I ate it up.
She didn’t talk as much about Duke – I picked that up on my own. As loath as I am to admit it, there are a lot of similarities in the way that Dean Smith (and now Roy Williams) and Mike Krzyzewski run basketball teams – emphasizing hard work and experience over showmanship. Both incredibly consistent, high profile teams. And yet, any North Carolina fan could point out the differences. Public school vs. private. And thus, North Carolina students vs. out-of-staters. Politically liberal coach vs. politically conservative coach. The everyman vs. the elite. And around this state, to be honest, there aren’t as many Duke fans as there are in other places, which makes it easy to call Duke things like, “The University of New Jersey at Durham.” We went to church in Chapel Hill, and on the Sunday of the Duke/Carolina game, the pastor would say things like, “Duke fans on this side, Carolina fans on this side.” And he was only partly kidding. The youth group sometimes watched games together, and what I remember about that is that people got their feelings hurt. A lot. (And by “people,” I mean “Duke fans,” because this was a period in which we were doing more of the winning in this particular rivalry. I am hoping we experience another period like that again soon.)
I’ve gone through different phases in my Carolina obsession. At the height of my fandom, in 1993, my team won the national championship. And I must confess, I could not watch. I went to bed at halftime, with Carolina ahead over Michigan, comfortable in the fact that, that season, they had never lost a game when they were ahead at halftime. “That’s an easy statistic when we’ve only lost four games,” my mother pointed out. Ignoring her logic, I went to bed, knowing I could not bear to watch. That’s the kind of fan I was – so emotionally invested that I could not handle the stress.
I have taken a few steps back since then, though, when he’s upset about a game, my husband still tells me that I’m not very fun to watch games with. He’s lashing out at me because I made him be a Carolina fan, made it a requirement of our relationship. He didn’t have a team, so I made him take mine, which means I can accept it when he tells me I’m taking it too seriously because he knows he is, too. He does admit now that the first time he saw me hide in a closet after Carolina lost in the NCAAs, he had some reservations about what he’d gotten himself into. But I’ve gotten better, and he’s gotten more passionate. We met in the middle.
So the last few years have been about teaching him things (I took him to the Dean Dome for the first time this year) and about sharing victories with my mom. But there’s one other thing that characterizes basketball for me, specifically the Duke/Carolina rivalry.
Sometime in the late 80s, my dad became a Duke fan. The reasons are not something he was proud of later on, but, in his defense, I will point out that he became a Duke fan before 1991, before all the winning. So he was, at least, a legitimate Duke fan, not the bandwagon kind that came out of the woodwork after the back-to-back championships. When I was in high school, this meant that we would make wagers about the Carolina/Duke games – whoever had the losing team had to wear the other team’s sweatshirt to church (the ultimate humiliation). This was, of course, the period in which Carolina was doing the winning in the rivalry, and also when we were all wearing our clothes extra baggy. There were many Sundays that my dad had to wear my XXL North Carolina sweatshirt to church. He accessorized by wearing a tie over it, not because he’s a tie man (my dad is definitely not a tie man), but because it would cover up the words. (I must admit that, the one time I remember that Duke won, I was so forlorn that he didn’t make me wear his sweatshirt. I think he wore it himself instead.) He stayed up listening to the infamous double overtime game in Cameron (my family doesn’t have ESPN) and told me about it in the morning. He would bring pictures from the Carolina/Duke games home for me, force me to hug him while he was wearing his Duke sweatshirt, tease me about my team. So, for me, the rivalry is about family. After I moved out, he would call me and talk trash before the games – he’s the only Duke fan I ever talk trash with. That’s just not my favorite part of fandom, unless my dad was involved, because I knew we loved each other enough that none of the basketball mattered, that our feelings, though they might get hurt, couldn’t stay that way for long. If Carolina did happen to win (which has been rarer in recent years, but has thankfully occurred), I would call my mom to celebrate and he would be in the background rebuking me for gloating. Right up until last season, my dad thought he could talk me and my mom into . . . well, if not cheering for Duke, at least not hating them. “I pull for your team when they aren’t playing my team,” he would say. “But your team is coached by the devil himself,” we would explain. It was our thing, the rivalry. It was part of our relationship, part of being father and daughter.
Last fall, my dad passed away from pancreatic cancer. I must admit that I have been dreading the first Carolina/Duke game without my dad to call me and declare that my team is going down. Will the hating be as much fun without him to play devil’s advocate (okay, bad pun, I am sorry)? I honestly don’t know. The holidays were hard without him, but it’s the little things that make me miss him the most. Basketball, for me, is one of those things.
When we were cleaning out my dad’s closet, my husband took my dad’s Duke jersey. I wouldn’t have taken it, but he said maybe he could use it for a Halloween costume. I think he also had the idea that I might want it one day, as a tangible reminder of what my dad and I shared. We can show it to our kids and tell them about my dad, how we used to tease each other, all while raising them to be good Carolina fans. I’m glad we do have it, if only because I like to imagine my dad, gloating in heaven about the fact that I have a Duke jersey hanging in my closet. I am sure he thinks this means he won in the end.
Being a North Carolinian means loving a basketball team, whether that’s Duke, Carolina, State, or Wake Forest. This season, despite my loss, I have still been cheering for Carolina, calling my mom to celebrate our victories and Duke’s losses. My husband and I have still been watching the games. The Carolina/Duke rivalry has never been about going to the games or being part of the overall fandom. For me, it’s been as much about love – of my mom, of my team, and of my dad – as hate.
4 Responses to “A Tale of Two Fans: Friendship at the Edge of Reason”
February 6th, 2007 at 9:44 am
I loved this post from both of you! What a great idea! I could probably share some of the same venom and stories with Georgia Tech’s rivalry with UGA. At least in basketball you get two chances to slay your evil rival, with football it’s only one chance and you are in misery or elation for a whole year (or in our case, misery for years and years and years….)
February 6th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
I loved this article. I also love it when you people refer to this as the greatest rivalry in sports.
Puh-lease.
February 6th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
jacob, it’s not like the saints/falcons counts as much of a rivalry. rejoice in how LSU pounded duke last year in JJ’s last year. remember that trey? that was great!
i had no idea what college basketball was until i went to my first game that mattered, january 1997, clemson vs duke. being introduced to ACC basketball changed what college was going to be like for the spring. camping out for tickets, sitting down behind the benches. one of my all time best memories of college was february 18, 2001, against unc. i hate both teams equally, for different reasons (unc for my crazy ex, duke for dahntay jones) but this year after duke’s magical clock operator added time to the end of the clemson game, i hope unc kicks duke’s ass.
oh and btw, i loved this article too.
February 10th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
what great writing, i must say. i’d love to pass on this article to all my carolina friends…because as you say, kari, “being a north carolinian, means loving a basketball team…” there’s a lot to say for that. it brought me great joy today as my almost 3 year old daughter shouted out, “go tah-heels!!”