My Other Obsession

I wrote on Sunday how I would add seeing UNC v Duke at Cameron to my list of things to do before die.  You see, I’ve been a UNC fan all my life and by saying that I mean a picture exists of me, 3 years old, wearing an ‘82 Championship T-shirt, sitting on the floor of my parents’ living room floor, a UNC basketball game on in the background.  I honestly believe that if I don’t wear my UNC T-Shirt, underwear, bra, and socks and we lose, it was my fault. 

Tonight is the first time we meet Duke this season and I woke up with butterflies in my stomach. 

That’s why I’m so excited about the new HBO special, airing this month.  DVR is set and I’m ready to take in all the glory that is Carolina-Duke Basketball.

The one-hour program will first be shown on HBO at 9 p.m. Feb. 23, and HBO Sports did a nice job of digging up archival footage for this piece, which follows the Michigan-Ohio State football rivalry documentary the network produced in 2007. The Duke-Carolina doc, which eventually will be released on DVD, is balanced, and offers fresh takes on familiar story lines from the principal characters, as well as some amusing anecdotes you may not have heard (i.e., Duke’s Art Heyman recalling with relish the 1961 brawl in which he punched a certain Carolina character in a sensitive place). N.C. State even gets props for helping to start the rivalry.

It’s obvious the tension is still there — at every opportunity, Michael Jordan trash-talks Duke, and the J.R. “Can’t” Reid episode is recounted, with bruised feelings still obvious. Referring to Dean Smith’s quote favorably comparing the SAT scores of Reid and Scott Williams to those of Duke’s Christian Laettner and Danny Ferry, Laettner tweaks the legendary coach: “Everybody makes mistakes. Even Dean Smith makes mistakes.”

And I definitely believe that the UNC/Duke rivalry is THE college rivalry (I’m talking to you, O-H-I-O and “Go Blue!”)