FanPost

Duke fan attacks A Sea of Blue and shoots self in head, avoiding serious injury

You all know that there is nothing, I mean nothing, that makes my day more than a  good, well motivated bit of Duke loathing.  Because Duke has no presence here at SB Nation, I get pretty much a free pass to whack them unmercifully.  For teams with SBN bloggers, I have to tread more carefully.  One day, SBN will have a Duke blogger, and part of me will regret that very much.

But not today.  Today, yours truly has taken judicial notice of the fact that the Duke Basketball Report took a swipe at my article criticizing Rivals for the stupid, made-up controversy about Midnight Madness I blogged on today:

That’s the only reason we can think of for this: in this tirade about a minor bit of criticism, the writer manages to imply that one of the writers he’s criticizing might be a “closet Duke fan.”  Note to Kentucky fans, currently orbiting somewhere around Sirius - Duke fans don’t need no stinkin’ closet!  We’re loud and proud (we could say we don’t stuff envelopes but that might get them saying we think Kentucky’s evil, too. We don’t: just seedy, corrupt, and conceited beyond any reasonable measure). [emphasis mine]

Pardon me while engage in an unseemly belly laugh at this person's expense.  Duke is well-known throughout the world as an elite academic school, and gets some of the best and finest young men and women to matriculate to their university.  Make no mistake, that reputation is well-deserved, and Duke is a fine academic institution.

Unfortunately, the writer of this snark seems to either be an academic "legacy" case (You know, the people the outrageous tuition and multi billion-dollar endowment are used to pay for without regard for their academic qualifications) or he is a fan who never actually attended the university.  In fact, it's hard to say whether or not he attended any school at all, since he evidently can't read what I wrote:

But the guy who completely flunks the logic test is McClellan.  It was probably just his turn to take the dumb position, so don't go off deciding this guy hates UK because he is a closet Duke fan or something. [emphasis mine]

Just to help the DBR author out in case he is still confused:  I am admonishing readers not to draw the very conclusion he says I implied.  How incredibly droll.  No wonder the New York Times Out of Bounds blog had this opinion piece up last year about how everyone cheers when Duke loses.  Here's my favorite part of that article:

For whatever reason, Duke – in a way that, say, Stanford or Northwestern or Vanderbilt doesn’t – represents a certain snotty, privileged, sweater-draped-over-the-shoulder elitism that we love to see taken down a few pegs. I’ve met many nice people who attended Duke but, well, I’ll just say I’ve learned not to make it the first fact about them I mention when introducing them to other friends. I was talking yesterday to a woman who knows nothing about sports and doesn’t care to. I mentioned that I was busy writing about the N.C.A.A. tournament, and she responded with, “When does Duke play? God, I hope they lose. I can’t stand those guys. Oh, and their coach … what’s his name? He’s the worst!” [emphasis mine]

I've met many nice people from Duke as well, and some of their fans are really great on line.  But the author of the DBR piece has just managed not only to live up to the stereotype laid out so beautifully above -- snooty, down-the-nose-looking elitist snobs, but he does so while demonstrating that he didn't even read the piece he is criticizing (I am giving him credit for being too intelligent to have made this obvious faux pas otherwise, perhaps undeservedly).  The double irony there is that he referred to Kentucky as, "conceited," in his post.

In a related bit of irony, I have received hundreds of hits from Duke fans reading the piece, and because I have some display ads up from Google, they have contributed to our financial well-being (albeit only pennies.)  Maybe the hits he receives from us as a result of this rebuttal will provide some measure of recompense.

Ah, schadenfreude.  It is a drug to which I am hopelessly addicted ...