When I told my roommate Jon that I was writing this week’s “View From The Tar Pit” article, he replied, “Well, at least you’ll have a lot to talk about.” No kidding. We briefly discussed the game, and, as he walked out the door to go to a meeting, he left me with this observation: “But you have to consider that Duke is a good… well, Duke isn’t a s***ty team this year.” This loss was particularly tough to swallow from a football standpoint because, as Jon so eloquently pointed out, Duke has had a pretty awful football team for a long time. UNC had won 21 of the previous 22 matchups heading into last night, and many of those games were blowouts. The Blue Devils hadn’t qualified for a bowl since 1995, and the last time they were ranked in the Top 10 of a national poll, the United States was fighting in World War II. From 1999 through 2007, Duke compiled an atrocious 13-90 record, including a 22-game losing streak from 2005-2007. In short, Duke has basically been the laughingstock of the ACC in football for the last fifteen years or so, the epitome of a basketball school in a basketball conference. Because of the prominence of the two basketball programs, people often point to the Carolina-Duke rivalry as the best in sports. Taking a cursory glance...
Read More