To Hate Like This...

In the first half of the Duke-N.C. State game in January, Wolfpack forward Brandon Costner was shooting what seemed like his 100th free throw in 45 seconds. Some of the calls were questionable, and Duke was actually losing the game. Costner, for his part, had seemed ready to fight Blue Devil guard Greg Paulus after a particularly hard foul earlier in the game.

As Costner prepared to shoot, a chant rang out from the student section: "Go to Hell, Carolina, go to Hell!" Huh?

I guess, as the cheer sheets remind us, the "Go to Hell, Carolina" cheer is always appropriate. But was it appropriate then? In the middle of a hotly contested game against an in-state rival? When that in-state rival actually knocked you out of the ACC tournament last year?

There's nothing worse than being the one team in a rivalry that cares a lot more than the other-and, though Carolina fans certainly hate the team they call "Dook," they don't deploy Duke-hating chants during other ACC games.

But when you think about it, this makes some sense. Carolina is college hoops royalty in a way that Duke is not. Dean Smith-grandfather of UNC basketball and mentor to every Carolina coach since his retirement-had a college coach by the name of Phog Allen, who had a college coach named James Naismith, who actually invented the game of basketball. Compared to that pedigree, Mike Krzyzewski's apprenticeship under Bobby Knight is small potatoes.

Now, I'm not saying that Duke isn't a blueblood basketball program, just that they're not a five-national-championship-winning, big-giant-arena-playing, five-million-jerseys-in-the-rafters blueblood basketball program. Compared to Carolina, Duke is nothing but a young and scrappy upstart.

We hate Carolina the same way that a little brother hates his big brother-we're (maybe subconsciously) envious of their impressive history and favored status within the state, and we begrudge them any success. (And they hate us the way a big brother hates the little guy-a mixture of disbelief and anger at being challenged and frequently beaten by the younger sibling. I'd probably argue that their hatred is sorrier).

All of this would be idle self-loathing speculation except for the fact that this type of little guy's inferiority complex is a major component of Duke's institutional psyche.

Why should Duke have a residential college system? Because Yale and Princeton do. Our president came from Yale, and the new dean of the medical school came from Harvard. The very buildings on our campus are modeled after Princeton's and (so the legend goes) James B. Duke only gave Trinity College the gift that named our school because Princeton wouldn't change its name in his honor.

We are constantly comparing ourselves to these older, more venerable institutions-mostly because we've surpassed all of the other younger universities to which we could compare ourselves. And in basketball, we have to compare our history and traditions to UNC-because we've surpassed nearly all of the other "new-comer" basketball programs to which we could compare ourselves.

But being a teenage institution has its advantages. With no blueblood reputation for stolidity to maintain, Duke has the ability to be different.

The wild, obnoxious Cameron Crazies never could've existed at a blueblood basketball school like Carolina or Kentucky. Even now, when it seems like every basketball arena's fans are Cameron Crazie-esque, I still think that Carolina's body-painted, wig-wearing students that sit behind the baskets are devaluing their program's blueblood tradition. What would Dean Smith think if he saw UNC students copying the traditions of those upstart Dukies?

Likewise, Duke as an academic and social institution can afford to be different. A thriving greek scene? Duke has it; its blueblood peers don't. The DukeEngage program? There's nothing like it anywhere else. Former Duke President Terry Sanford called it "outrageous ambition" and said it was one of this University's distinctive features. At a teenage university, there's no tradition standing in the way of doing something outside-of-the-box.

Duke's institutional inferiority complex pushes it to compete with its more established peers-academically and on the basketball court. But when the inferiority complex leads us to blindly hate or envy our blueblood competition, we sell ourselves short.

Institutionally, we start to lust for the Ivy League to the detriment of much that makes Duke special. We think that we want what they have-top-notch academic prestige, a more scholarly community-at the expense of what we have that they don't-top-notch athletics and social life combined with a fantastic education environment. On the court, we ignore what's most important-winning games-and concentrate on beating just one opponent.

So continue hating Carolina, just don't let it become all-consuming. And maybe, try to put your hatred for them aside when Duke's locked in other tight games.

Except for Tyler Hansbrough. What a bug-eyed, contact-losing, always-traveling, Beaker-look-a-like, easy-bleeding a-hole.

Alex Fanaroff is a first-year medical student and former conductor of the notorious Train.