Why UNC vs. Duke is so much more than just a sports rivalry

Photo by Lance King/Getty Images

This is a black hole that absorbs a state, and we’re in the biggest chapter ever.

It’s impossible to really understand the rivalry between UNC and Duke unless you’ve lived in North Carolina. I know, I know — that sounds pretentious as hell. It’s like someone with an apartment in New York saying “you don’t understand trees until you’ve walked through Central Park,” but I promise it’s true. College basketball’s greatest rivalry is so much more than even a battle of hatred, it’s all-consuming. Even as life-shaping as this battle has been over the years, the heights on Saturday are unprecedented. This is the most important UNC vs. Duke game in history, and that’s not hyperbole.

The stakes are obvious. It’s the first time these teams have ever met in the NCAA tournament, and it happens to be in the Final Four. In a normal year this would be enough to have fans on both sides frothing at the mouth, but this is not a normal year. As if we didn’t need to up the drama of this game any more, Coach K’s career is on the line. Duke fans want nothing more than to see him keep dancing and cut down the nets to close it out, while Carolina fans are salivating at the idea of knocking out Krzyzewski and making Duke fans cry, again.

This also makes it so, so much more personal than you can imagine. I didn’t get it when I first moved to North Carolina. Naturally I knew these teams disliked each other, but I never fully understood how the scope of what these games mean, or how this rivalry is a Triangle-shaped black hole, pulling in everything in its orbit.

It was a cool fall morning in 2002. My stepmother went to UNC, wore Tar Heels apparel for her morning run, but I never really saw her care that much about sports. Then came Duke vs. UNC week. Here she is, buckling my infant half-brother into his car seat, getting ready for her morning commute, and out walks our neighbor, getting ready for her own drive to work. She was a Duke fan. Casual pleasantries were quickly replaced by two grown adults arguing at 7:45 a.m. over whether Chris Duhon was a piece of shit, or the greatest point guard in college basketball.

This rivalry will do that. You can be close friends for 50 weeks out of the year, and loathe each other for three. God help you if you’re a Heels fan and you cross a Duke fan after a loss, and vice versa. In this rivalry everyone has a team, whether or not you really pull for UNC or Duke. Maybe you hate the Tar Heels because everyone talks about them. Perhaps you hate Duke because of the Cameron Crazies. Maybe you’re an N.C. State fan, in which case you just hate yourself — the point is, when it comes to UNC vs. Duke, there’s no fence sitting.

Hell, look at Eric Church. Here’s a dude who grew up at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, hours from either Durham or Chapel Hill. He went to Appalachian State, a school with no affiliation with either UNC or Duke. This game is big enough to warrant cancelling a concert over — a sold out concert, in San Antonio, with over 20,000 tickets sold. All because he knows what this game means.

This is a rivalry that defines neighborhoods. It inspires humiliating joke bets and trash talk between games. There’s no shortage of amazing rivalries in sports, but nothing compares to the acrimony that comes from Duke vs. UNC, because of the proximity of everyone involved. Every street, every workplace, each friend group — all will have a Duke fan. At least one. They’re normally lovely people, until you discuss basketball with them, then they become insufferable.

Don’t get me wrong, Heels fans can be annoying as well — prattling on about Michael Jordan and Tyler Hansbrough like the dude at the bar desperate to tell everyone about being a quarterback in high school.

College football tends to exist town-to-town, pro sports are normally state-to-state, Duke vs. UNC is everywhere in North Carolina. You know those “house divided” license plates? There’s a reason Amazon only has two left in stock when it comes to Duke and UNC, and hundreds of every other combination remaining.

Speaking of that whole “House Divided” thing ... pour one out for this poor couple who are getting married on Saturday. The groom is a Tar Heels fan, the bride a Blue Devils fan — their reception is going to be pure hell.

“I really never thought I’d end up with a Carolina fan,” Sullivan said. “Like ever. It was a worst-case scenario for me, but I liked him and I liked that he knew about sports. Plus, I thought that I’d eventually convert him”

There is no converting either fan. As someone who spent most of my life in NC and also been married for 14 years, lemme just tell you: Never try to change a person. Especially if they’re a Heels fan who thinks Grayson Allen is a piece of human garbage. They will never like J.J. Redick, and trying to force that is simply a losing battle.

North Carolina needed this. The pandemic robbed all of us of so much, and while UNC vs. Duke is a minor blip on the radar, it’s part of the fabric of normalcy that makes up North Carolina. The 2020-21 season was so underwhelming with Duke failing to make the tournament and Carolina getting bounced in the first round that it was an unsatisfying end to Roy Williams’ tenure. Now, we get the do over. A chance to send this era off right, an opportunity to make neighbors and friends angry once more, with the most that’s ever been on the line.

Screams of joy and agony will echo down streets and normally quiet cul-de-sacs. Grocery stores are now stocked with UNC and Duke themed cupcakes to show our culinary allegiance. The joy of winning and making the national championship is an afterthought, the true goal is hoping the other fanbase is emotionally destroyed. Next week the after-work beers and pleasantries can resume, but for now North Carolina is in the grips of sports’ biggest rivalry, on its brightest stage, with history on the line. There’s nothing else like it, and it’s impossible to understand just how fever pitched it all is until you’ve lived it.