Duck Fuke.
The pic of his Hitler Youth Duke fan crying always brings a smile to my face.
Let me be the first to say – Barry Mangelo is no stranger to irrational hatred. I’ve devoted much time here at Best Worst Things to that which I dislike and lord knows there’s a lot. My bile knows no limits, my hatred no bounds. I hate Susan Sarandon, olives, every song by Journey and people who dress up in pun-related costumes for Halloween (the next person I see wearing a Cereal Killer costume is going to get a nut punch) The sheer weight of my hatred is even a bit much for me sometimes – I hate how much I hate things.
But of all the things I despise, there is nothing that riles me more than Duke University and the Duke University men’s basketball team. In my mind, the Blue Devils are bastions of pure evil, a cabal of malevolent miscreants rooted on by a crowd of over-privileged dicks with white men’s overbites and popped up collars.
My intense hatred was born and bred in College Park, MD. It’s been said that you are not a true alumnus of the University of Maryland if A) you don’t know James Bond and B) you don’t hate Duke with an undying passion. And the unleashing of that hatred is pure pleasure. It’s a Festivus-style Airing of the Grievances.
To us, Duke represents everything wrong with the world. And this hatred becomes a bond – it unites us. We proud, few Terrapins – people from every different background, ethnicity and nationality – come together in the bonds of mutual disgust. It’s like what happened in Independence Day, where the world led by the Bill Pullman and the Fresh Prince, ignored racial, religious and political differences to defend their planet against the alien horde.
Obviously, it’s easy to hate a winner. To the University of Maryland, Duke has always been that unbeatable foe, that immovable object. We are forever the struggling underdog – like John Conner fighting the Terminator, or Ripley fighting the Alien or human decency struggling to survive Glen Beck. But make no mistake, despite what you might hear from Carlos Boozer’s mom (who gets a concussion from an empty water bottle?) we are the good guys here.
John Scheyer's stupid face
Honestly, what’s not to hate about Duke? Coach K and his smarmy nasal, banality? The ridiculous floor pounding of Wojo? Shane Battier’s misshapen, wrinkled forehead? JJ Reddick and his awesome poetry? John Scheyer and his stupid face? I hate his stupid face.
And the fans… the so called Cameron Crazies. Lemmings – the lot of them. They bounce up and down in unison, defying gravity with their collective sense of entitlement.
So tonight, I’m heading to College Park to see what will hopefully be the best college game of the year. If Maryland wins, they’ll tie Duke for first place in the ACC (for those non-sports fans, I’m not sure what a good equivalent would be… maybe making it to the second round of Top Chef or something).
And should we win the day, the 3rd of March will no longer be known as the birthday of Tore Ørjasæter, the famed Norwegian poet, but as the day when the world declared in one voice:
“We will not go quietly into the night!
We will not vanish without a fight!
We’re going to live on!
We’re going to survive!”
Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!
An Addendum: The game was awesome. Go terps!
