from Truthdig:
These Devils Wear PrivilegePosted on Apr 1, 2010
By David Sirota
With the beginning of the ever-optimistic spring season, the television is delivering yet another thrilling college hoops clinic, meaning it’s time for us to gulp down our annual swig of Haterade—specifically, the blue-tinted kind. Once again, Duke basketball is upon us, and analyzing the root cause of widespread Blue Devil enmity has now become a Kremlinology-like sub-specialty among the sports cognoscenti.
Some, like ESPN’s Bill Simmons, suggest that Duke is loathed because it supposedly gets preferential treatment—i.e., better bracket placement—from NCAA officials. Columnist Paul Wachter goes further, asserting that Duke foes believe the team unduly “gets all the press and all the calls.” Meanwhile, NBC’s Mike Celizic proffers the mishmash hypothesis: “Haters think the Devils’ fans are arrogant snots, that the coach is a pinch-faced biddy and that few of the players are NBA-bound.”
Having grown up in Philadelphia during the city’s championship-less dark ages, I’ve developed a particular expertise in (and appreciation for) such virulent sports resentment—and in the Great Duke Debate, I side with The Nation’s Dave Zirin. Combine all the leading explanations, add in Duke’s status as an upper-crust, ultra-expensive private school, and I subscribe to his theory that says our penchant for hating on the Blue Devils reflects America’s larger, more complex relationship with privilege.
This makes sociopolitical sense. A country founded on anti-royalism and defined by anti-aristocrat political rhetoric will naturally profess disgust for, say, Ivy League presidential candidates and incumbent congressmen—just as it will loudly claim to despise Duke basketball (and Yankee baseball and Cowboy football and ... you get the point). In short, purporting to abhor inequality, advantage and dynasty has long been as red-bloodedly patriotic as loving mom, adoring apple pie, and, yes, booing teams like the Blue Devils—teams that seem to wear their privilege on their jerseys. .............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/these_devils_wear_privilege_20100401/