Duke Vs. UNC: Still the Biggest Game of the Year

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There's no hype for it.  ESPN hasn't even had much promotion for the game.  Even Dickie V isn't as excited.  This game is now Average with a capital A baby!

Tonight at 9pm on ESPN we get to see the best rivalry in all of sports, Duke vs. UNC.

Argue that claim all you want.  I'll defend it.  This isn't a watered down rivalry like Yankees/Red Sox where the teams play 21 times during the year.  This isn't Michigan versus Ohio State that basically changed from a great rivalry to a mediocre rivalry once Michigan signed Rich Rodriguez and ended any since of tradition.

No.  This is better than any of those.  The game tonight is about two neighboring teams, separated six miles apart that play each other twice a year during the regular season for one reason.  Respect.

The game is about lineages of players and fans that are jovial when they win and distraught when they lose.  There's history, there's presence, and there's a future at stake with every game they play.  What makes this rivalry so special is that it doesn't matter the ranks of the team's playing or the caliber of players on the court.  What matters is that we have two teams that hate each other with two legendary coaches that dislike each other and you put them on a court for 40 minutes and you never know what is going to happen.

Everyone remembers Jeff Capel's half court heave to send the game into double overtime against UNC in 1995.  Do you remember that UNC was 16-1 and Duke was 10-9 with a 0-7 ACC record at the time?  Probably not.  You probably don't even remember that Duke lost that game in the second overtime.  That's what makes it special.  One play, in one meaningless game, is still heralded as one of the best moments in college basketball history and one of the greatest moments in this historic rivalry.

This is rivalry week.  We've seen some great games already including Kansas versus Texas and Villanova versus West Virginia.  Who cares though?  Those games were good, but they weren't moving, they didn't have anything memorable.  They didn't have any hype either and those were basically top fifteen teams playing against each other.

This game may not have the glitz and glamour of a big time matchup because the records don't say so, but it's still the biggest game of the college basketball season; at least until March 6th when they play again.

Rivalries are about seeing the love from the fans toward their team and the hatred of the fans toward the opposing team.  They're about history, tradition, pride, and respect.  They're about the name on the jersey, not the name on the back.  This is the rivalry that has all the intangibles that a great rivalry consists of and it will always be that way.  There have been blowouts in Duke/UNC games when both teams were top 5 teams, there's been close games when the teams had records nowhere near each other.  It doesn't matter.

This game is the greatest college basketball game of the year because even when we think we expect one thing, it always seems like we get something completely different; and that something different, is usually something special.