All Request Day: Why UNC?

Both Mad and Fun Ball want to know why I like UNC hoops.  I get teased about this by Housemate, who thinks it's absurd.  I do not have a strong connection to UNC, so it's a bit arbitrary.  My best friend went to UNC, and when I graduated from Yale she had a semester left.  I had planned to move down to live with her, and maybe to take a writing class from Doris Betts, a writer I admire who teaches there.  But I accidentally fell in love and moved in with a guy instead, so I never made it down to Chapel Hill. 

The more interesting question is why I root for a college basketball team at all.  It was a deliberate choice I made a couple of years ago, because I thought that I should see what it was like to be interested in sports.  And because I noticed just how much of the vocabulary of business and deals was sports language, and thought I should build my own aptitude.   So I thought about which sport I should learn about.  I decided on basketball because it's the only televised sport where you can see all the players and the ball at the same time.  So I can watch and I always know where the ball is, and I can see what the defense is doing and what the offense is doing, and I can see patterns and plays and the flow of the whole game.  There's no other sport like that.  Hockey is the closest, but that little puck is so small that I can't really see it all that well.  Plus the players are ugly brutes who seem to want to kill one another more than they want to do anything else.  So I picked basketball (although I'm learning to appreciate, without being particularly excited about, baseball and football).  And I think college sports are much more interesting than pro sports, mostly because the fans are so fervent and the rivalries so strong, and the players so young and unfinished. 

So when I decided to start watching college ball my best friend was thrilled and assumed that I'd become a UNC fan.  And since I didn't have any other strong ties, I figured that would work.  And after a couple of years I'm getting to know our boys and the coach and have developed the appropriate hatred for Duke.  And just last week I got a box in the mail with a fantastic birthday present -- a real UNC baseball cap, the sized kind that fits my head just right.  I'm so excited to start wearing it to the sports bar and trash talking anyone who's rooting for the other team. 

I did show up for a game a couple of weeks ago but the local CBS affiliate was broadcasting a different game, and the sports bar didn't have any way around that.  So I watched UConn playing someone else (maybe Indiana?) and thought that perhaps it was time for me to start caring about other teams, in the other conferences, perhaps.  I'm still woefully ignorant but now that I have the rudiments of the game down and I know our players, I'm starting to pay attention to other teams and how they're ranked and who's a threat.  It makes everything a little more interesting.  So if you have suggestions for other teams I might root for (or against), or just keep my eye on, I'm ready to expand my universe a little more. 

Comments

[jdz]

I don't blame you for liking UNC - Roy Williams is a classy guy and we were very VERY sad to see him leave Kansas. We're doing ok tho these days (a #2 ranking ain't too shabby) and Bill Self seems to have fallen nicely into Roy's footsteps. If you are looking for another team to support that is classy and fun to watch and has rabid supporters, it doesn't get much better than this. KU is a true hoops school and Lawrence is a basketball mad town... everyday I park on NAISMITH Drive... it doesn't get any more basketball than that! We've made it to two final fours in the last three years and have fallen short every year... I have a different feeling about this one! Bill Self is running a great program and the players actually all seem like really nice guys... You should definitly follow Kansas (but then again, I'm a little biased.... ;)

[Autumn]

I'M SO GLAD YOU GOT THE HAT!!! I didn't know it was sized- I am relieved it fits. I need to get Tony one... another Yale grad who has inexplicably turned into a UNC fan.

[Jeff]

GO NAVY! BEAT ARMY!

I have to stop calling my mother during basketball season - I appear to have a knack for intuitively knowing when a UConn game is on and calling then. And to think growing up she had precisely zero interest in sports...

[Milbarge]

I knew you had taken up UNC hoops, but I didn't realize you had drunk the Kool-Aid. Not all Dukies deserve hating, and sometimes it's fun to be for the team everyone loathes. I'm glad you like college basketball, though, regardless of how misguided your affections are.

[PG]

If you're thinking of rooting for another big-time college hoops team, but want to avoid any conflicts of interest with UNC men's, how about UConn women's basketball? They'll never be in the final four with UNC, yet they're a great team with a hardcore coach.

[Milbarge]

The Duke women have a great team and a good, cool coach who is not near the nutjob Geno is. I'm just saying...