The reason behind the rivalry

When I wrote my column two weeks ago, I was expecting a lot of hate mail.

As a matter of fact, I was kind of hoping for it. I was looking forward to verbally rumbling with any stranger who so much as looked at me the wrong away in the Chik-Fil-A line.

There was one problem: You all agreed with with my suggestion to scale back K-ville. All the verbal feedback I got was positive. Some dissenters sent in their written opinions, but The Chronicle also received some very nice letters in my defense.

I didn’t receive nearly as much venom as my colleague Jason Strasser did for his outrageous suggestion that Duke might have been overrated.

Although I’m sure he would never admit it, I’m sure Jason is smugly enjoying the benefits of “I told you so.”

The Blue Devils’ loss to Maryland triggered a wave of embarrassment across campus and a similarly enthusiastic celebration in College Park. That tragic night I received a curious message on thefacebook.com.

The note was from a student currently enrolled in the University of Maryland, a man whom I have never met before.

So as not to embarrass this individual, let’s call him either K. Mahnajan or Kunal M.

Today, a day that will celebrate the greatest rivalry in college sports, a day that has caused a bevy of students to camp out for more than a month, and a day that will divide the great state of North Carolina, I pose to you this question: Why the hell do we give a flying frig?

My words contain no degree of cynicism. There is nothing wrong about loving sports; there is obviously something about athletic competition that stimulates the human spirit. I myself have devoted a ridiculous quantity of my time trying to cover it in the pages of this publication.

But the reasoning behind this motivation still escapes me.

Usually the explanation of why we hate Carolina falls under three lines of reasoning. Two aren’t very informative.

“It’s just a fact of life,” one of my friends recently informed me.

“Because we’ve hated them for years,” another said.

Of course neither of these two explanations gets to the root of the problem. The widely recognized third theory digs a little deeper.

“You see, we are better athletes and better students, so they have nothing to lord over us,” one student said with the modesty befitting of a Duke student. “They see us as a bunch of rich snobs who have everything, and we, well, we resent their resentment because it’s unfounded and they apply it to every Duke student.”

At this point I would like to introduce you to a writer by the name of Franklin Foer, a reporter for The New Republic who last summer published a book entitled “How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization.”

The New York Times described the central thesis to Foer’s tome, which tried to explain the behavior of the average European soccer hooligan. According to the Times, Foer contends “that modernization, economic rebirth and a general rise in sophistication have not reduced tribal rivalries in all highly advanced societies, that pointless internecine warfare is almost a hobby for some people.”

In his book, he sums up his point very eloquently by saying that “Nobody, it seems, hates like a neighbor.”

Sound familiar?

Could it be that the differences in wealth, demographics and customs have divided Durham and Chapel Hill into two irreconcilable tribes that, for lack of a better venue, must conduct battle on the basketball court? Is it possible that these basketball games are simply filling the unsatisfied holes in hearts that lust for warfare?

Perhaps.

“Or,” my third friend noted, “we hate them because they’re just a bunch of turd sandwiches and douches. Either way, it’s the same thing.”