...You have to respect achievement.”
Frankly, Duke’s Mike
Kryzdhvnbmc4ski could not have put it more succinctly when he described the core of the North Carolina v. Duke rivalry late in the HBO documentary The Battle For Tobacco Road: Duke and North Carolina.
“You have to respect excellence, and you have to respect achievement.”
In fact, while he was addressing the fundamental respect between the two incredibly accomplished programs, he may have unknowingly addressed the primary reason so many people care about the outcome of these games each year.
Because they're good – year-in and year-out for almost all of the past 25 years.
Fans of other
ACC schools will
roll their eyes and moan at that assessment, but everyone of them would trade their teams’ record for either Carolina or Duke’s. While they complain about the “over exposure” of the rivalry or the “conspiracy” among refs to give these two powers all the calls, they are secretly thinking “
wouldn’t it be nice to have all those jerseys and banners hanging in the rafters at (fill in the blank).”
The new HBO documentary eloquently sets the stage and captures the highlights of the 8 Mile War that’s been going on since basketball was first played at the two universities.
(In fact, the first game ever played between North Carolina and Duke, known then as Trinity College, took place January 24, 1920. North Carolina won 36-25. But, that’s not important…or is it?)
During the 1960s, the two schools emerged from Everett Case and N.C. State’s giant shadow to dominate the league. While other
ACC members have had their moment in the sun,
UNC and Duke have consistently clung to the tip-top of the iceberg.
Rivalries are made up of both tangibles and intangibles. The Duke/Carolina rivalry enjoys the tangible of geography which produces an intensity that is fueled by the proximity of just eight short miles. The primary intangible is perception. Perceptions about class, race, culture and attitude.
Neither really understands the other or their perceptions, and, frankly, neither really wants to.
But, when the blood dries (and there has been a fair amount of it for a basketball rivalry) and the smoke clears, what fuels the rivalry the most is excellence and achievement. Keeping up with the Joneses in Durham and Chapel Hill is no easy feat.
All the best rivalry's bonfires have excellence as their starter fuel. Their games are played out on a major stage for major championships. The high drama and massive exposure makes more than the locals passionate about the outcome.
When college football first rose to national prominence, the big rivalries were at the top of the heap. Army v. Navy and Army v. Notre Dame got national news coverage and ultimately created heroes worthy Hollywood tale telling.
Yes, Harvard and Yale (“The Game”) is the oldest football rivalry having commenced in 1875, but “The Rivalry” between Lehigh and Lafayette, which began in 1884, has generate the most games – 144.
The story may sound vaguely familiar. The two Pennsylvania schools are just 17 miles apart, and the games are always sold out. The one year they didn’t play was 1896 when Lehigh refused to play over a dispute about the eligibility of their best player, Charles "Babe" Rinehart. Down Carolina way, that would be referred to as a competition involving urine.
So why doesn’t everybody care about Lehigh and Lafayatte? Easy. They don’t have this intense dispute annually on a national stage. Although Lehigh enjoys one of the highest graduation rates in Division 1 at 97% of its student athletes, they aren’t likely to beat Florida, USC or Oklahoma anytime soon. While Lafayette has won three college national football championships (in 1896, 1921, and 1926), they pose no threat to even in-state football powerhouses Penn State or Pitt.
Bragging rights are great, but championships – both in a premier college basketball league like the ACC and on the NCAA’s grand national stage – ultimately power the biggest rivals.
The Virginia-North Carolina football rivalry is the oldest in the south (1892 – tied with Auburn-Georgia), but nobody much cares except fans and alums one Saturday each season because neither have played consistently on the national stage with a championship hanging in the balance. Oh, that’s right, they never have.
If you want old, we’ll get you Miami (OH) v. Cincinnati (1888), Army v. Navy (1890), Auburn v. Alabama (The Iron Bowl, 1893), Georgia v. Georgia Tech (The Clean, Old Fashioned Hate Game, 1893), Brigham Young v. Utah (The Holy War, 1893) and, of course, the other “The Rivalry” (sharing its name with Harvard v. Yale) Ohio State v. Michigan (1897).
But which two stick out? Army-Navy is a wonderful nostalgic classic, Georgia Tech finally got off the mat last year to beat the Bulldogs, but the two games that annually attract the most attention and the most hair pulling and teeth gnashing is obvious – The Iron Bowl and The Rivalry.
Auburn, Alabama, Michigan and Ohio State are among the top teams almost every year, and that means one thing – the college football equivalent of war.
All rivalries are fueled by what’s at stake whether it’s Pitt v. West Virginia (The Backyard Brawl), UCLA v. USC, Texas v. Oklahoma (The Red River Rivalry), Florida v. Georgia (The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party) or Amherst v. Williams (The Biggest Little Game In America). But the bigger the prize, the larger the audience will be.
The relative success of the competing teams makes other rivalries ebb and flow. How about Florida State/Miami/Florida at any give time? Remember Oklahoma-Nebraska and Texas-Arkansas to name just a few? Such rivalries have their day, but then they fade when coaches and fortunes turn the wrong way.
The ACC has the Commonwealth Cup pitting Virginia against Virginia Tech, the Palmetto rivalry of Clemson and South Carolina, Georgia v. Georgia Tech and Florida v. Miami. There used to be a Maryland v. Penn State rivalry, but rivalry is a rather loose term as Penn State won the overwhelming majority of the time.
Basketball is a little different. There aren’t as many rivalries and the existing ones are played out in front of many fewer fans. Think about how many people have attended a Duke-North Carolina game over the years in quaint Cameron Indoor Stadium which seats 9,314 compared to the throngs that have witnessed Michigan-Ohio State in The Big House which seats a cozy 106,201 big blue fans.
The oldest basketball rivalry is said to be Wisconsin v. Minnesota. No offense, Tubby and Bo, but if you aren’t a Badger or a Gopher (think about that for a moment), who really cares?
It’s hard for younger fans to know the dominance that was John Wooden’s UCLA teams. They won ten NCAA titles between 1964 and 1975. Had ESPN, the Internet and the 24 hour news cycle been around at the time, their stranglehold on college basketball would be even more well known. If John Wooden had Big Monday or Rivals Week to recruit with, the Bruins might still be almost unbeatable. They didn’t have too many rivals because they kept beating everybody so consistently for over a decade.
Even without unlimited media coverage, the Bruins overshadowed almost all of the college basketball rivalries of the time, and it took one of the nations’ giants (Notre Dame) to stop their 88-game winning streak, and an ACC powerhouse (N.C. State) to halt the run of seven straight National Championships. But neither watershed game sparked a long running rivalry of note between the Bruins and either the Golden Domers or the Wolfpack.
During that period other basketball rivalries simply paled, and few have arisen since to occupy center stage. Lefty Driesell tried to make Maryland the “UCLA of the East” and for a period Maryland-N.C. State was big. In fact, that rivalry, when fueled by David Thompson, Monty Towe, Tommy Burleson, Len Elmore, John Lucas and Tom McMillen, generated what many (including T.A.H.) think was the greatest single hoops’ game of all time – the 1974 ACC Final won by N.C. State 103-100 in overtime.
(The game was held prior to dunks or a three point line, and when only the ACC tournament champion played in the NCAA tournament. That losing Maryland team, with six future NBA draft picks, is considered the greatest team to never participate in the Big Dance.)
Of course there were other rivalries that piqued interest due to the quality of the teams and the personalities of the participants. John Thompson’s Georgetown v. Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse and Ralph Sampson’s Virginia v. Dean Smith’s Tar Heels to name but two. Others generated interest because they weren’t played for the longest of times when they should have been – for example, Kentucky v. Louisville and Maryland v. Georgetown.
There are rivalries within each of the conferences – Indiana v. Purdue, USC v. UCLA, Kansas v. Missouri, UConn v. Everybody in the Big East, Every School in Philadelphia or New York City v. Every Other School in Philadelphia or New York City, but none match level of interests when the two different shades of blue hook up in North Carolina every February and March.
The Tar Heels and Blue Devils have combined to win 79% of the conference's regular season titles and 58% of the tournament titles since the ACC's founding in 1953. The final game of the regular season for both schools alternates between the campuses at Chapel Hill and Durham. They have played in Cameron Indoor Stadium since 1940 and the Dean Smith Center since 1986.
Duke has won three NCAA championships and has been in fourteen Final Fours, while North Carolina has won four NCAA championships (the team was also awarded a fifth national 
championship by the Helms Athletic Foundation in 1936 for their undefeated 1924 season) and has appeared in seventeen Final Fours.
Both schools are also two of the most victorious programs in NCAA men's basketball history. North Carolina is #2 all-time and Duke is #4. The Tar Heels lead the all-time series 129-97.
Excellence? How about this? For the last 124 meetings at least one school has been ranked in the AP Top 20 or AP Top 25.
And
then there is “eight points in seventeen seconds,” and, of course, the Cameron Crazies take credit for inventing the term “air ball.”
Go ahead, roll your eyes…
Great players, playing in great games for the championship of and bragging rights in what is unarguably historically the best basketball conference in the nation is exactly what makes this the greatest rivalry in basketball. All those ACC championships lead to No. 1 seeds at the Big Dance where these two teams have consistently ended up playing in late March and early April when the most eye-balls are glued to the game.
The HBO documentary effectively steers you down the long and winding Tobacco Road, and only fails to mention UNC stalwart assistant Bill Gutheridge (who took the Heels to the Final Four after his mentor Dean Smith retired) and whatever happened to Pete Gaudet?
No road goes on forever, but the Duke-North Carolina rivalry shows no signs of staying anywhere but on the asphalt between the pine trees of the nation’s basketball consciousness.
The next bump in the road?
March 8th at the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill.
No. 14 WAKE FOREST 85, N.C. STATE 78 – N.C. State upset Wake Forest in their first meeting, but the Demon Deacons’ James Johnson (#23) wasn’t going to let that happen again. Johnson had career highs with 28 points and 18 rebounds to help Wake dodge the Wolfpack 85-78. 
Johnson had a double-double by halftime and was 12-of-16 from the field to surpass his previous top performance of 26 points -- which he matched in the up-and-down Demon Deacons' most recent outing, a 101-91 loss four nights earlier at No. 7 Duke. 
Miami (17-10, 6-8 ACC) had been in a freefall of late, losing six of their last seven, but got some clutch shooting from McClinton when it mattered most down the stretch. His third 3-pointer gave Miami a 60-55 lead and he added two free throws with 19 seconds left.
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