Every year at this time much of the country drops whatever it's doing to watch the NCAA basketball tournament. Suddenly there are no politics, no protests, no righteous anger (except toward the Washington Post and its newest blogger fiasco). Just a lot of basketball.
But there is one consistent, strange thread, as evidenced by the discussion this morning at the deli across the street from my apartment building. There a street vendor, a construction worker, two gangsta-wannabes, two yuppies in synthetic-fiber running outfits, and the short order cook behind the counter were talking about the tournament.
Although the group was rooting for different teams -- with enough passion to start a fight if it hadn't been eight o'clock in the morning and no one was adequately caffeinated, they all came together on one single notion. They all hated Duke.
I mean, they hated Duke. Really hated the place. Not that any of them had ever been there, or really knew anyone who had. They just simply hated Duke.
It's become something of a national phenomenon, this March rite of Duke-phobia. No one seems to know where or how it originated, but it's severe and intense. A friend of mine who went to North Carolina at Chapel Hill tells me that he and his friends spend the entire year studying, drinking, and hating Duke. Friends who follow the Big East say that outside of a Connecticut or Villanova win, all they care about is a Duke loss. Guys who don't even know where Duke is, hate Duke.
For a while I wanted to find a political connection: maybe it was a Democratic thing. After all, Duke is the ultimate preppy-guy-with-a-sweater-tied-around-his-shoulder school. Whereas other schools have players named Magic or Big Baby, people from Duke are always named things like Christian or JJ. A few years ago The Princeton Review called the school the most homophobic in the country. It's suppose to be the least liberal of highly rated colleges.
But the Republican Duke-haters tell me the opposite; they think Duke is filled with pointy-headed liberal moon bats. To some, it's coach Mike Krzyzewski, and his grim-faced visage. But there are plenty of more incendiary coaches out there; Bobby Knight springs to mind. (I would say, however, that it might help the team's image if Krzyzewski would add a few vowels to his last name and stop dying his hair with black shoe polish.)
The bottom line: I've been following the NCAAs since I was in college, probably because I went to a Pac10 school during UCLA's record breaking run of tournament victories and got hooked. That's thirty-five years of Final Fours. And I still can't find any other consistent theme to the tournament outside of the Duke hatred.
Someone please tell me why the madness.