Could it be just a dream?

There's schadenfreude across the land. Duke is out of the college basketball rankings for the first time since 2007. To those grinning and gleeful, it is the comeuppance long overdue. But for all of you now at Duke who are down and discouraged, know that it is not the first time. In the very early 1980s, when Coach K—and my friends and I—had just arrived in Durham, decline was what everyone saw then too, not only of the Duke basketball team but of the country as well. The Carter Administration had just ended. Americans had been held hostage and humiliated by Iran, economic uncertainty was everywhere and there was what President Carter called a malaise across the land. Here's how Ronald Reagan put it on the eve of his election back then.

“Americans seem to be wondering, searching. . . feeling frustrated and perhaps even a little afraid.”

Many of us are unhappy about our worsening economic problems, about the constant crisis atmosphere in our foreign policy, about our diminishing prestige around the globe, about the weakness in our economy and national security that jeopardizes world peace, about our lack of strong, straight-forward leadership.

And many Americans today, just as they did 200 years ago, feel burdened, stifled and sometimes even oppressed by government that has grown too large, too bureaucratic, too wasteful, too unresponsive, too uncaring about people and their problems.

Americans, who have always known that excessive bureaucracy is the enemy of excellence and compassion, want a change in public life—a change that makes government work for people. They seek a vision of a better America, a vision of society that frees the energies and ingenuity of our people while it extends compassion to the lonely, the desperate, and the forgotten.”

With the results from the Iowa caucuses and the national presidential polls, it's clear that at least a swath of the country is again in a sour place and again looking for a change in public life. These fellow citizens of ours are genuinely down and discouraged. They don't see the institutions of government, education or corporate America working for them, and they don't expect things to get better with the leaders we now have.

In late February 1981, just after Reagan took office, Duke was about to miss out on the NCAA tournament for the first time in years. And then, Coach K’s team won its last home game in overtime against North Carolina, a team on its way to the national finals (where it got beat by Isaiah Thomas and Bobby Knight's Indiana Hoosiers; talk about schadenfreude). And after that epic Duke/Carolina game, that very same day, Bruce Springsteen sang about genuine despair and real hope just down the road at the Greensboro Coliseum as part of his tour supporting the release of “The River” album. From the game and the concert, there was a glimmer that day of what would again be and a call to work for a better tomorrow.

In a couple of weeks from now, on a late February day 35 years on, the Duke basketball team will play at Louisville, maybe ranked, maybe not. And the day after, Bruce Springsteen will play in the same arena as part of “The River Tour.” I'm not sure if I'm dreaming all of this up or if it's really real. But I could use another glimmer of what will again be and a call to work for a better tomorrow. If you could use it too, maybe I'll see you in Kentucky.