After my last post about my declining interest in sports I better come out with another sports-positive post.  The one sport I still get really juiced for is college basketball and there’s no better place to live to satisfy that jones than in North Carolina.  This week is particularly good because we have the end of the ACC regular season and we have Carolina/Duke playing on Saturday.

In anticipation of that Ed Cone has continued a debate about the ACC Coach of the Year that started over at Patrick Eakes’ blog and includes references to a column in the W-S Journal by John Delong. Ed’s arguing for Roy Williams at UNC and I’m agreeing with Delong (not in all the details however) in supporting Coach K at Duke.  Since I’m a Wake fan (and NC State after that) I feel that I’m a little more objective than all the UNC partisans, but then I would thin that wouldn’t I? Either way it’s really fun stuff.

Quick aside: One thing I’ve noticed since moving to NC is that while much of the country dislikes Duke, all non-Duke fans in NC seem to have a special level of hatred for that program.  Seriously all Carolina, NC State and Wake fans can agree on one thing: they hate Duke. 

I do understand what big business that college basketball is, which you would think would put me off like the crass, greedy nature of other sports has, but there’s still something wonderful about watching very talented athletes who aren’t yet as polished as their professional brethren.  And I think the passion of the coaches, players, students and alumni give the games a special atmosphere.  That comes through pretty clearly in the debate at Ed’s place.