robert puglia, April 5 at 7:17 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

i think embellish with wind should have its own column
that we might be safe to read other articles without
suffering its scintillating insights.
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Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read my posts.  I skip the posts of those who I feel have little to contribute.

You should do the same rather than bitching about it.

I was at UNC when Coach K was hired. I watched him build his program.  He’s the best coach in the business and he just won his 4th national title.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how much money
Duke University received from the tobacco industry
over the last several years?

“Inherit” clearly knows what he’s talking about (I’m assuming gender here).

It’s nice to see Sirota having a little light-hearted fun here, and not succumbing to “christian96’s” impulse to unrelenting seriousness. But I think Sirota has gotten carried away with his theme. Duke’s privileged state – as in being a private, exclusive institution, has nothing to do with the animosity poured onto it. Rather, what people resent is the privilege it enjoys as a perennial contender. It’s all about recruitment in big-time college sports. And nothing draws the cream of the recruiting crop more powerfully than winning on a national stage. Coach K not only consistently makes it to at least the elite 8, he also has the well-earned rep of being the best basketball coach on the planet. Any high-school grad with aspirations of NBA riches and the chops to go along with it would be nuts not to at least give Duke a hearing.

America’s “complicated relationship with privilege” isn’t really all that complicated. As a rule, Americans – being a society built on entrepreneurialism – honor and admire success. To a point. Once that success becomes self-perpetuating, at least a vocal segment of us start hating them.  Of course, Americans are human beings like any others (much as we hate to admit it), which means that a majority of us like to associate ourselves with winners (its Darwinian). Which is why the Dukes, Yankees, and Tigers of the world attract a disproportionate number of eyes to the goings on. It only SEEMS like they are universally hated because their admirers are rather shy and embarrassed by their affection, whereas the haters are proud and flamboyant in their animosity.

Being pretty much told over and over by sportscasters that Duke players are actually literate gets kind of tiresome.

christian96, So we must be in a constant state of turmoil, and whoa to those who seek any diverson from a constant state of madness!

Nobody understands Duke-hating better than a North Carolina fan, like me.  And I remember when Duke-hating was SOLELY the province of ACC fans—North Carolina, NC State, Wake Forest, Virginia, Maryland, Clemson and Georgia Tech.

The bottom line is the Coach K is simply the greatest college basketball coach in the game today, and up there as one of the 4 or 5 greatest ever, with John Wooden, Adolph Rupp, and Dean Smith.

Mike Krzyzewski came into a program in disarray. He had one blue-chip player, Vince Taylor. Mike Gminski had graduated and North Carolina was THE hated team.  Likewise Jim Valvano came to NCSU at the same time—two young coaches with success at small schools—K at Army, Jimmy V at Iona.  They became friends and stayed friends, but OH! the post-game interviews they had to endure explaining losses…

I saw one game, I think it was Taylor’s last visiting UNC, where the lights went out about 4 minutes into the game—power was off for 45 minutes on a Saturday afternoon.  When it came back on, James Worthy, Sam Perkins and Michael Jordan (Yes, THAT Michael Jordan, just a freshman) pounded the Devils into the ground by well over 20 points.  Coach K had only one comment after the game “We would have been better off if the lights had stayed off!”

Krzyzewski then recruited “The Twin Towers”, Mark Alarie and Jay Bilas who were supposed to turn them into a national contender.  It took a couple of years but they did.

But what Duke-haters forget is that the Blue Devils went to a lot of final 4s, and several championship games, only to come home empty-handed. “Coach K can’t win the Big One!” wrote the press—just like they had for years and years about Dean Smith—especially after UNC’s loss to Bobby Knight, Isaiah Thomas and the Indiana Hoosiers in 1981. (Isaiah Thomas was a dirty player then, who got away with more fouls than you can believe.)

When Duke FINALLY pulled it off, and then repeated, Duke-Hating became a national pastime.

Now, after 30 years, the program is STILL running like a well-oiled machine and what had been a blue-chip program before Coach K, is now a legend up there with Wooden’s UCLA or Rupp’s Kentucky.  It’s been an amazingly scandal-free program and Krzyzewski has gone from a barely-30 young man to his 60’s in Durham (as in Bull Durham) and is STILL putting top teams out every year.

And he still gets the Christian Laetners and Grant Hills to come play for him.

Despite my admiration, I’m still a Carolina fan and want the Tarheels to whip the Blue Devils’ butts every time they play.

This article strongly confirms my belief truthdig
is sorely lacking for substantial writing material.
I’ll try to be of help with the following quote by
Alexander Tyler:  “A democracy ALWAYS collapses over
loose financial policy and is ALWAYS followed by a
dictatorship.” Chew on that one for awhile.  Duke?
What a joke!