RateItAll: The Opinion Network

The basketball rivalry between Duke and North Carolina is the fiercest blood feud in college athletics. To legions of otherwise reasonable adults, it is a conflict that surpasses sports; it is locals against outsiders, elitists against populists, even good against evil. It is thousands of grown men and women with jobs and families screaming themselves hoarse at eighteen-year-old basketball geniuses, trading conspiracy theories in online chat rooms, and weeping like babies when their teams -- when they -- lose. In North Carolina, where both schools are located and separated by just 8 miles, the rivalry may be a way of aligning oneself with larger philosophic ideals -- of choosing teams in life -- a tradition of partisanship that reveals the pleasures and even the necessity of hatred. What makes people invest their identities in what is elsewhere seen as "just a game"? What made North Carolina senator John Edwards risk alienating voters by telling a reporter, "I hate Duke basketball"? What makes people care so much? The answers have a lot to do with class and culture in the South. I had to steal that to post because, after growing up in NC, attending UNC, and living less than a mile from Franklin Street where we jump through fire when the locals, the populists, and the good prevail, emotions are too great to throw onto a page less than 12 hours after we beat Duke on their turf, their senior night, with a team of freshmen.

Man am I glad that I don't live in North Carolina any more. This was serious. In Charlotte it wasn't as huge a thing, but if you ever went to the Raleigh-Durham area, and there was a game, it was horrible. Half of the people were die-hard fans of their teams and they drive the other half crazy.

What a huge, storied rivalry.This is as close to Ohio State vs. Michigan as you can get.