We Called It Haterade

Last weekend, I think my father and I watched perhaps a bazillion hours of college basketball between the two of us. At times we had three or four games working at once (thank you, Cox Cable). However, when Duke played West Virginia on Saturday, our attention remained fixed on a single game.

Neither of us have any relation to Duke or West Virginia (other than that WV point guard Joe Mazzulla is from Rhode Island and I am thus contractually obligated to support him and his team). And yet we threw our support behind the Mountaineers like we were John Denver or something. This is because, like the bulk of the country, we hate Duke.

They're kind of like the opposite of America's Team. Don't believe me? Check the internet. It never lies. This year, there have been about 6.02x10^23 posts (including this one) that basically say something to the tune of DUKE SUCKS LOL. 

This widespread hatred, historically, hasn't been confined just to Duke. Just over the last dozen or so years, the Patriots, Lakers, Yankees, Cowboys (maybe this was just me) and Manchester United, just to name a few, have experienced the same animosity. I remember celebrating Luis Gonzales's bloop single in the 2001 World Series as if my own team had won it. I don't even like the Diamondbacks.

Why does everyone loathe Duke so much? Well, it could be that the Crazies act like a bunch of attention-hogging assclowns, or that the players flop more than the Italian soccer team. Or it could be their stupid faces. 

I think it comes down to overexposure. The team, Coach K, and the fans see more air time than most pilots (BA-ZING!). ESPN crams the Cameron Crazies down our throats and treats them like the greatest fans in the world. We've constantly heard about how amazing Duke players are, even though most of them, at best, will end up like Trajan Langdon (also, J.J. Reddick is a douchelord). But when you think about it, are their fans or players any worse than those at other colleges? I remember kids who painted their faces and looked like asses (By the way, being loud helps your team WAY more than painting your face and/or body. To the athletes, odds are you just look like a blur of [insert team's colors] anyway.) at our hockey games at BU, and yet we weren't generally hated

Wait. We were. Bad example.

Still, these people are there at pretty much every school. To a small degree, the floppers aren't limited to the Blue Devils' squad, either. Duke isn't different enough from most other colleges to engender all that hatred. But you know, what, we hear about Duke all the time, and that's annoying as hell. In the entertainment world, the same phenomenon is present. Think of the backlash against Juno, a perfectly enjoyable movie. Or that whole Ben Affleck-J-Lo thing. I don't know if the animosity towards the couple was necessarily for their actions or for the fact we had to hear about them all the damn time. It's the same thing for Duke.

Or maybe this is why they suck.

So next time you see Duke on TV, it may be good to step back and think and

OH GOD I HATE THEM SO MUCH