Countdown To College Hoops: 70th Reason to Be Pumped, The Evil Empire

Every day, I will give a new reason to be pumped for the upcoming college basketball season. Here's the 70th reason to be excited for college basketball season.

New York Yankees. Dallas Cowboys. L.A. Lakers. Duke Blue Devils.

What do they have in common?

They are the evil empires of their respective sport.

But what makes college basketball's concept of the evil empire so great is the fact there are a multitude of hated programs.

There's evil empires of the South, the North, the East, the West, the Little Guys, and the nation as a whole. You think of a demographic and there's probably a school that fits the bill of an evil empire.

What's best about the notion of an evil empire is the raw fun a fan gets out of rooting his or her butt off for that team to lose.

The world of college basketball looks forward to the day the little guys of the ACC blow their horns of Jericho and knock down the walls of Krzyzewskiville.

There will be great rejoicing amongst the peasants of college basketball. Western Kentucky and South Alabama will hold hands. George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth will sing Kum By Ya. Indiana and Illinois will stop fighting over Eric Gordon...oh wait that's never going to happen.

So what programs out there are evil empires that when they fall will trigger Texas to sound its bell tower like wedding bells or give West Virginia a chance to burn couches?

America's college basketball evil empire is none other than Duke. There really isn't a case for any other school out there. CBSSports' facebook application for March Madness asks each user to list his or her most despised school. Duke is the overwhelming winner with 77,000 haters which is twice as many as any other school.

Year in and year out, Duke wins. The Blue Devils could be ultra talented or made up of solid role players, but it doesn't matter. It seems like they are always hoovering around the top five.

In the Northeast, Georgetown has quickly ascended to the most evil empire of the region. Under the guise of the second John Thompson to coach at GU, the Hoyas have become a target in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

A combination of recent success, an un-Northeast style of play, a flurry of questionable calls by refs that's benefit the Hoya Saxa, and just that high-falutin' attitude that is Georgetown has basketball fans in the Northeast clamoring for a shot at taking down the Hoya Paranoia.

In the Midwest, it's now a story of "oh how far the mighty have fallen." The evil empire that is Indiana basketball is currently in ruins. When you throw together a coach who text messages more than a 13-year-old cheerleader, graduating seniors, defections to pro-basketball, and transfers, you get a program that doesn't have a recognizable name on the active roster.

Out west there's the school that wins in everything. UCLA recently celebrated the fact they've won 100 national titles across all of college athletics. Pretty obnoxious right?

What's more obnoxious? The Bruins' history in college basketball. It's the fact they practically have a decade of winning national titles. It's the fact they keep dominating the west recently, but cannot actually win a title. 

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