Raleighdurham.about.com

By Bill Rife 

Frank Lloyd Wright famously warned, “If you stick your head above the crowd, they’ll throw stones at you.”  Duke University’s basketball fans know whereof he spoke. The three-decade success of the Blue Devil program under Coach K has spawned, far from adulation, an irrational and near-unanimous loathing. The current final-four squad is as much the object of that beady-eyed hatred as any of its predecessors. Sportswriter Dave Zirin appearing this week on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, trashed Duke mercilessly and characterized their upcoming appearance in Indianapolis as a travesty. Zirin, who exudes the athleticism of a garden slug, is far from alone casting the Dukies into outer darkness. Senior Editor at The New  Republic, Jason Zengerle, wrote a piece titled “Go to Hell, Duke” in the March 3 edition of Slate. Even respected sports author John Feinstein in Tuesday’s Washington Post  characterized Duke as the “villain” in this weekend’s final-four configuration. Feinstein quotes coach Mike Krzyzewski responding when asked if Duke would have a target on its back, “We’ve had a target on our back for 25 years now. We expect that wherever we play.”            

Not your favorite team, OK, but why the downright hatred?

  In large measure it’s image. Chuck Liddy in the Raleigh News & Observer writes “ Duke’s an elite private school and its fans, the Cameron Crazies, come off as entitled rich kids (much like James Blake’s “J-Block followers at the U.S. Open).” Seizing upon an all-too-familiar anti-Blue Devil refrain, he concludes “Duke gets all the press and all the calls. They’re too white.”

Zengerle blogged in 2009 “The presence of so many white players on Duke’s team creates the somewhat unusual dynamic of white fans taunting white athletes….no one’s going to hold it against you for rooting against a school that’s largely rich, white and successful.” Caucasian males are the one group in our society which is fashionable to trash, even by its own members.

But would either Liddy or Zengerle welcome the ensuing maelstrom if he had written that there were too many blacks on any team?

The liberal media are quick to pounce on any perceived “social injustice” and Duke was notoriously hammered not long ago. On day one of the 2006-7 Lacrosse Rape Case, the New York Times, according to Thomas Sowell, “… splashed the accused students’ pictures on the front page along with the inflammatory charges against them, and went ballistic on its editorial page….” Abigail Thernstrom concludes her Wall Street Journal review of “Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case “ with, “The vitriolic rhetoric of the faculty and Durham’s ‘progressive’ community-including the local chapter of the NAACP-helped to intensify the scandal stroke the media fires. The New York Times was particularly egregious….it ran dozens of prominent stories and ‘analysis’ articles trying to plumb the pathologies of the lacrosse players and of a campus culture that allowed swaggering white males to prey on poor, defenseless black women.  One shrewd Times alumnus later wrote ‘You couldn’t invent a story so precisely tuned to the outrage frequency of the modern, metropolitan, bien pensant journalist.’ Such Nifong allies-unlike the district attorney himself-paid no price for their shocking indifference to the truth.”

So we have a Duke team in the Final Four, white kid pathologies and all. As one student blogs, “Duke tends to play tenacious defense and work the ball around to hit open threes. While this is a very effective style of play….it does not have the flashiness that the breakneck pace of UNC…and the dribble drive of Kentucky have. While the ability to shoot the ball exceptionally well as the Redicks and Scheyers of the world  is to be admired, Duke’s style of play relies more on cerebral players with a particular skill set rather than raw athletes who tend to dominate the SportsCenter top 10. In this regard, Duke’s style of play could understandably lack appeal to the Dunk Contest generations.”

 It’s fair to knock Duke’s unspectacular, anachronistic style, as seen by some, and even their coach, who frowns a lot. But bellyaching that a major college basketball team is “too white” is way over the top in 2010 America. 

Go Devils!