True Confessions:
“I Married A Duke Fan”

I was raised in what can best be described as a religion-free household. Of course, I was baptized (Methodist, in case you’re wondering) and I went to church with friends and neighbors on a number of occasions. But basically, my family moved around too often to get much out of joining a local congregation for a year or two.

The closest I’ve ever been to being a member of a church is when I fell in with a cult-ish crowd of Carolina basketball fans in college. Their blood ran baby blue and many of them considered Dean Smith to be a religious leader on par with the Pope.

If you’ve ever been in Chapel Hill on game day you know what I mean. If it’s an away game, this bustling college town all but comes to a halt as everyone is glued to television screens at restaurants, bars and homes. If you are a true UNC fan, you know that the only way to watch the game is to turn the sound down on the TV and use the radio play-by-play of Woody Durham, the official voice of the Tar Heels, on WCHL-AM.

My friends and I watched many a Tar Heel game at the home of Alison and Susan, two true-blue UNC grads. One of these fine upstanding UNC alums had actually swiped a Carolina cheerleader’s pom-pom that she found on the floor of Carmichael Auditorium after a basketball game. This powder blue and silver pom-pom became our sacred talisman, a direct line to the basketball gods. We were only allowed to shake the sacred pom-pom if the Tar Heels were in trouble late in the game.

The sacred pom-pom was retired in the early 1990s after it had been reduced to a handle and a few scraggly strands of baby blue. But it had served its purpose well, vanquishing on many occasions the evil powers known by their human forms as Lefty Driessell, Terry Holland and Mike Krzyzewski.

The rivalries involved in ACC basketball are among the fiercest on the planet and my Tar Heel friends and I would spend hours making up jokes about players like N.C. State’s Chris Washburn who once claimed that he was amphibious because he could shoot with either hand. We even created an annual “ACC All-Ugly” team of which Duke’s Bobby Hurley was the team captain for four years straight.

These days, I try to be somewhat sane and reasonably reasonable when it comes to my college basketball affiliation, but some of my friends have no qualms when it comes to hating their rivals.

For example, one of my Chapel Hill buddies, Alvis (who is a professor of Latin American studies), saves a special place in his heart for fans of North Carolina State University.

“They are just the worst people on the face of the earth,” said Alvis last week. “I hate them much more than I hate Duke fans. I remember three years ago they would come up from Raleigh and yell ‘8-and-20’ after UNC had that dismal season. What has their team done in the last 24 years? Nothing. Those people are worse than Al Qaeda.”

At home, especially at this time of year, I have to be careful about the venom I spew toward Tar Heel enemies. That’s because (oh, the shame) I married a Duke graduate. That’s right, I admit it. I married a lovely woman named Leslie who has many fine qualities despite the fact that she attended the University of New Jersey at Durham. To be fair, she did attend UNC for her post-graduate degree. But when push comes to shove during basketball season, she is a devil in a dark blue dress a.k.a. a female Duke fan.

Last year Leslie bought a Coach K. bobble-head doll. I eventually made her get rid of it because its beady little eyes and pointy, ferret-like nose seemed to follow me wherever I went. Banishing the doll from the house seems to have pleased the basketball gods as the Tar Heels swept the two-game season series with Duke for the first time in 11 years.

Of course, the two wins over Duke were not without some bloodshed. Last Sunday’s game featured what can only be termed felonious assault as Duke freshman Gerald Henderson brought a crashing elbow down on the face of UNC sophomore Tyler Hansbrough, breaking the Tar Heel’s nose in the process. Henderson was quickly ushered out of the Dean Dome and has been suspended for the first game of the ACC Tournament this week.

Don’t be too surprised if the Blue Devils and Tar Heels meet again this year, either in the finals of the ACC Tourney or somewhere along the brackets of NCAA championship. If that’s the case I hope it’s not too late to bring the sacred pom-pom out of retirement.