Duke wins, 99% of Nation angry.
Duke Basketball, Yankees baseball and New England Patriots football. Three teams that are perennial title contenders, that the rest of the sports world loves to hate.
The Yankees are easy. What with a bloated payroll, an unmatchable local revenue stream and a system that's got no interest in seeing their domination challenged, if you're not from New York hating the Yankees is a rite of baseball passage. Hell, Derek Jeter alone is enough right? I mean, does the guy REALLY need the entire Maxxim hot 100 to hang with? Couldn't he leave 1/2 of them to the rest of you single guys out there?
Then there's New England, with their star QB and a coach so disagreeable he refuses face time with himself in the mirror every morning, a team that's learned to play fast and loose with the rules, that cuts players with cold calculation, and who wins...every single year. Yup, hate away on New England. They deserve it.
That leaves us with Duke. A team whose vile reputation, in my opinion, lies not with the program or the players, but on one Richard J. "Dick" Vitale. That's right, Dickie V. ESPN's hyper basketball commentator who wakes up every morning, rolls over, and kisses a life-sized cardboard cut-out of coach V before asking his wife to go and get the paper. It's not enough that Duke is usually pretty good, but College basketball pundits such as Vitale and Jay Bilas (a former Duke player) pump them up as an unbeatable machine even in years when they obviously aren't. People hate that, they also hate success, seeking to tear it down.
The beauty about March Madness is that, unlike College Football, the champion at the end of the year is a true champion, having won the title on the court, against 64 of the best teams in the land (give or take a couple left out by the selection committee) in a single elimination format that creates the best event in sport, period. Before the Duke nay-sayers have a chance to try and diminish Duke's championship as some type of "gift" (which, when you think about it, is terribly unfair to the Butler team everyone was rooting for) it should be mentioned that both Syracuse and Kansas St. had a chance to knock-off the upstarts, and both failed. Duke did what the other #1 seeds could not do, they made it to the Final Four and won the championship. Congrats to them for that.
And congrats to Butler for making one hell of a run, and (for the record) being the prime mover in me having the winning bracket.
As for Duke, they'll go on being hated and won't give a damn what you think. They'll take their 4th NCAA title, have a party in Durham and will start planning for next year.
Maybe. Because the rumor is the New Jersey Nets are prepared to offer Coach K 5-years; $75 Million. So yeah, that's another reason folks will hate Duke. Their coach is loaded.
