See, I’ve never bought that argument that the UNC/ Duke rivalry is on a different level because “They play three times a year,are in the same conference and those games they play uaually decide the regular season and conference championships”… for starters, I lived in North Carolina the past four years and I wouldn’t label their fans’ passion as any more intense than ours. Let’s give ourselves some credit— our state is home to some of the most irrational people on the planet, and more often than not their energy is channeled into basketball (if any of you guys are familiar with the work of “oh napier,” at one point he posted a music video to his site that included the lyrics “and I’m spankin’ tubby’s ass for every game he lost,” and not to point Crazy Fingers; we can all agree that louisville fans are batshit nuts about basketball too— how many college crowds would let out a huge collective cheer when their team was on DEFENSE, when preston beat his man around a screen in a huge game last season?). Not saying that people in North Carolina don’t care, because good lord, they do, but I would by no means put their passion on a different level from ours.

Secondly, the very fact that they play so often I think could actually dilute things somewhat. They do play more often than we do, and familiarity and repetition are key ingredients to a healthy rivalry. But when you play three times a year, the impact of each individual game is lessened somewhat— if you’re Duke, you can say, oh well, they got us that time, but we’ll get ‘em on the next go-’round, and vice versa. That doesn’t work for us. Our rivalry is built on the very thing that makes college basketball’s playoff so unique and captivating— it’s a one game, winner-take-all slugfest, and I think in some ways that makes it a lot more special. U of L and UK aren’t constantly being measured against the same competition, they aren’t constantly being compared, so when they meet it’s a huge event, kind of like how huge the World Series used to be before all of this Damned Inter-league Business. And this one game gives bragging rights for an entire calendar year— yeah, the fact that Conference Titles and Whatever are at stake means something for Duke and UNC, but strictly from fans’ Rivalry-We-Beat-You-We’re-Better-Than-You-So-You-Guys-Can-Suck-It-For-A-Year standpoint (the passionate fans’ part in any rivalry that in my opinion, cannot be understated) the titles don’t mean a hell of a lot. It’s who beats who. I suppose this falls apart when National Titles are thrown in, but the last time UK won the title, I do believe a certain team from a certain Falls City beat them earlier in the year.