Tonight’s University of North Carolina Vs Duke University basketball match offers an auspicious opportunity to present the Duke-UNC rivalry, an entity that has its own Wikipedia entry, which informs us that

It is considered one of the most intense rivalries in all of US-sports: a poll conducted by ESPN in 2000 ranked the basketball rivalry as the third greatest North American sports rivalry, and Sports Illustrated on Campus named it the #1 “Hottest Rivalry” in college basketball and the #2 rivalry overall in its November 18, 2003 issue.

Now, I like classic rivalries. More precisely, I like classic rivalries that are sustained with equally massive quantities of enthusiasm and mindlessness.

Consider this example: Following Duke’s victory in the 1992 championship game, Duke of Derm and I left the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis in a bus full of (adult) Duke supporters. Within nanoseconds, the bus was filled with the dulcet Duke intonations of the traditional Duke mantra, “Go to hell, Carolina, go to hell.”

Only those unacquainted with the Tobacco Road rivalry will be surprised to learn that Duke had not defeated North Carolina that night – because Duke played Michigan in the Finals. North Carolina, in fact, had not made it to the Final Four or the Elite Eight. It makes, as we say in the Ozarks, no nevermind.

And to give equal time to UNC, I offer a second example: In 2012,U.S. Representative Brad Miller, a die-hard Carolina fan, told the Associated Press, “I have said very publicly that if Duke was playing against the Taliban, then I’d have to pull for the Taliban.”

As far as I can determine, the only reason the Duke-North Carolina rivalry exists is that both school, located ten miles of each other, have maintained high level, successful basketball programs.  Other rivalries have at least a nominal rationale for their creation. The Missouri-Kansas is said to hearken back to conflicts in the mid-1800s between pro- and anti-slavery forces.

Regardless, the Duke-North Carolina rivalry, like those between Oklahoma-Texas, Missouri-Kansas, Army-Navy, and the rest, have long transcended their specific institutions and no longer require battles between or even proximity to the contestants; they have become, in fact, independent, metaphysical sacraments.

I’m told, by the way, that a line from the North Carolina State University Fight Song that references the University of North Carolina, “Come over the hill, Carolina,” is actually sung in vivo as “Go to hell, Carolina” by the State students – those scamps.