I am a Duke Blue Devil Fan

And I will now go light myself on fire.....

In 1990, I started becoming a fan of basketball. I grew up in a hockey loving house where I knew every Edmonton Oiler and thought I was going to be the next Jari Kurri. Something changed with my first taste of March Madness when I watched the Duke Blue Devils overcome overwhelming odds to defeat the UNLV Runnin Rebels in the 1990 Final. I was a huge UNLV fan, with the likes of Larry Johnson, Stacey "Plastic Man" Augmon, Greg Anthony, Anderson Hunt, and so on...My dad was a huge Duke Blue Devil fan with the likes of Christian Laetnner, Brian Hill, Thomas Hill, Bobby Hurley, etc..I hated that dad liked them. Cheering for Duke was like cheering for the Yankees or the Cowboys (oh wait, he also cheers for them!). Duke is a private school where rich kids go to train for careers where they'll make a lot money. It is not a culture that I have a lot of desire to be apart of. But something has happened over the past few years. College basketball has changed.

For years, the Blue Devils were the easy team to hate. They all had nicely groomed hair (minus Cherokee Parks),, they all sprinted to the bench when they had a timeout or a substitution, their coach was in every commercial ever produced, their coach looked like the Penguin, their coach's voice is annoying, Christian Laettner played there, their nick name is dumb, the coolest team in America, the North Carolina Tar Heels, plays just down the road and is their main rival, and so on and so on...there are so many good reasons not to cheer for Duke. But watching this NCAA tournament I started to have an odd feeling towards the boys in blue and white. No longer did I resent their team play or their lack of individuality. I began to respect them. Yes, respect them. Maybe its because their coach hasn't been found in the bathroom of a local Italian restaurant with another women and then tried to throw money at her to cover up the mistake. Or maybe its that their coach doesn't recruit one and dones like John Calipari and have smart cousins write his kids SAT tests for them. Unlike Jim Calhoun, Coach K doesn't call out reporters who ask him about how much money he makes or doesn't get DUI's like Bob Huggins. With so much scandal surrounding the NCAA now it has become easy to gain a certain level of respect for Coach K.

I liken it to my feelings towards Peyton Manning. For so many years it was easy to hate him. He was from a family of wealth, he had every opportunity to be successful and he was, he licks his hands more than any human being should (especially when they spend so much time near his centers rear end), he appears in so many television commercials that you get tired of seeing his face. But after awhile, he wears you down. You get to the point where hating him becomes more about you than him. While his counterparts are off running dog fighting rings, sexually assaulting young co-eds (allegedly), impregnating mutliple women, getting shot by girlfriends, retiring/unretiring/retiring, he just keeps working on his game and getting better. You move from disliking him to being thankful that there are people like Peyton Manning in the NFL. And I'm saying this as a Patriots fan. I wasn't even openly routing against him when he went up against the Saints this past year. I've moved on. How can you not root for Manning now?

I have the same feelings about Duke. Coach K has ignored offers from many NBA teams (most notably the Lakers) and remained loyal to Duke. He has run an incredibly clean program that doesn't even come close to being sanctioned by the NCAA. His players play the game the right way, are all about team, and are very fundamental. When there are people like John Calipari getting paid millions to coach a professional team in the NCAA and he can't make it to the final four, you all of a sudden find yourself rooting for the Dukes of this world.

For loyal Duke followers this might be a backhanded compliment. I think Dukies liken themselves to the big bad Yankees, Cowboys, or Patriots. Winning machines that cannot be stopped. But realistically they are more like the Colts, Red Wings, or Atlanta Braves. They consistently win, consistently have great teams, and stay out of the news. For that reason and many others, I will have a hard time rooting against them this weekend as they journey to Indianopolis. Maybe, just maybe, Peyton will be there, licking his hands, watching them hoist the national championship on Monday night.