Was very surprised that MLB was going to pass the NFL in revenue. I thought it was dying a slow death.
Don't know about soccer but Allen Iverson was an incredible football player, going both ways as quarterback and safety at Bethel High where he led them to the state championship. I've heard him say football is his true love but he just didn't have the height to play Div 1 ball.
Don't understand the hate for Duke. Even the group of 88, who actually deserve ridicule and derision, can't get hate from me....have those knuckleheads ever apologized?

Quoting harkin: Don't understand the hate for Duke. Even the group of 88, who actually deserve ridicule and derision, can't get hate from me....have those knuckleheads ever apologized?

Clearly you haven't met the Duke fans that I've met.

Not much into college basketball, but let me just tip my hat to the Bloggingheads potentates for doing a sports discussion. I'd love to see more.

Clearly you haven't met the Duke fans that I've met.

So you hate Duke because of their fans or you just hate their fans? Being a life long sports fan I've seen a lot. From San Antonio fans waving burnt records at Kareem after his house burned down to the Frisco fans throwing batteries at the Dodgers to Wally Joyner being hit with an open buck knife thrown from the upper deck (I even saw Dennis Rodman get a shoe bounced off his dome while I was working floor cam in an NBA game)......plus all sorts of fights from Chicago to Dallas to Puerto Rico to Mexico, almost always fueled by booze. I've even been challenged to duke it out in Sacramento for cheering on the Lakers. Mean, sometimes even scary stuff but I don't get the hate, it's like you are buying into their mood.

Quoting harkin: So you hate Duke because of their fans or you just hate their fans?

Being a life long sports fan I've seen a lot. From San Antonio fans waving burnt records at Kareem after his house burned down to the Frisco fans throwing batteries at the Dodgers to Wally Joyner being hit with an open buck knife thrown from the upper deck (I even saw Dennis Rodman get a shoe bounced off his dome while I was working floor cam in an NBA game)......plus all sorts of fights from Chicago to Dallas to Puerto Rico to Mexico, almost always fueled by booze. I've even been challenged to duke it out in Sacramento for cheering on the Lakers.

Mean, sometimes even scary stuff but I don't get the hate, it's like you are buying into their mood.

Honestly, I don't care that much. But as Hampton describes, I unfairly use Duke as a stand-in for a certain type of excessive privilege and ass-holery. I figure if sports isn't the time to have unjustifiable tribal hatreds, what is?

I hated Duke for a night in 1994, (Chris Collins was on that team, btw), but after my Razorbacks beat them in the National Title game I forgot all about the Dookies and basked in the glory of my team winning it all. Other than that one night, I've been mildly annoyed with Duke from time to time, but mostly I'm neutral. Here's one person's view on why they're hated: http://www.lostlettermen.com/2010/03...pised-moments/

LOL. These guys are great!

Were you one of those who thought the Duke Lacrosse team raped the young stripper? I hope not.

When the story broke, I suspected that the charges were true, In retrospect, this was not one of my finer moments, but at least I didn't go around trumpeting this unfounded opinion to anybody.

Love the baseball. It's outdoing the NFL for a lot of reasons, but one reason it's doing so well is that it is the most family friendly professional game to go to (okay...maybe not in Oakland), and it's not completely beyond the means of most Americans. There's no shame about sitting in the bleacher seats.

I agree about baseball moving too slow these days. 2.5 hours top would be nice.

I'm pretty sure Duke hatred is a meme that began as a bit of class warfare but now is self sustaining.

Some pictures to go along with this diavlog: "Inside Baseball: Politicians And The National Pastime" and "Inaugural Balls: Ceremonial First Pitches, Then And Now." (I liked the first series better.) From the first: Can you guess who these guys are?

Quoting bjkeefe: Can you guess who these guys are?

Wow. I had no idea! I knew G. was friends with Ted Williams and Roger Clemons.

I use to live like 4 miles from "G." 's presidential library. You run into a huge (like maybe 12 ft diagnol) poster of that picture 5 minutes after you enter.

Evil-Doers Root For...

I hate Duke mainly because a friend of mine loved them and was totally obnoxious about it in high school (early 90's.) We even got chased out of a backwoods party on Cape Cod when my "friend" started pissing all the locals off in an argument about Duke. We had to run drunkenly through the woods while being chased by the townies. I was very happy to see UNLV absolutely DESTROY Duke in the finals the following year. Look forward to checking out this diavlog.

Which cartoon character does Leitch resemble? I can't quite place it.

Well I still enjoy the totally incoherent class warfare. What makes it particularly crazy in my case is that I went to a Southern private school with lots of the same entitled white boys, but had no problem rooting for us when we nearly made the final four. I guess part of it is being from North Carolina. It's hard to not care, you really are obliged to hate either Duke or UNC.

Quoting Don Zeko: I guess part of it is being from North Carolina. It's hard to not care, you really are obliged to hate either Duke or UNC.

Long, long ago, someone sent me by email a list of jokes Duke students tell about UNC and jokes UNC students tell about Duke. It was the most marvelously surreal experience -- I got none of them, but somehow, they were hilarious.

You don't really count though. It isn't surprising a good portion of North Carolinians hate Duke. It's the national hatred that is surprising. Also, last year everyone was rooting for Davidson. People love scrappy elite private schools doing well unless they are elite private schools that always do well. Hatred of Duke is all about mythical working class anger at the rich moving onto their turf. Love for the underdog trumps class warfare most of the time.

And NC State cries softly in the corner...

I think Will's prediction may be a bit off regarding the expansion of the Big Dance. While the Thurs-Sunday excitement of the tournament's opening weekend is incredible, it is a huge amount of time to devote to one sport (any sport) over such a timeframe. As much as alot of "softcore" fans get into the spirit and do brackets etc., I can see the possibility that like me (who used to be hardcore) many might become overwhelmed at the prospect of being hungover for 6 days rather than 3-4. While the hardcore fans may love the expansion I think there's a fair possibility that the ratings etc. will not payoff as the NCAA and tv networks are assuming. And I think Hampton's point about the NIT and other tournaments is very true. There's much less excitement about a playoff when essentially everyone gets in. Hampton is utterly wrong on baseball. The fact that he has a small attention span is a symptom of his brain, not the game of baseball. While I agree that the breaks are too long and some sort of delay penalties would serve the game well, I have trouble taking his

Quoting uncle ebeneezer: And NC State cries softly in the corner...

Pretty much. I suppose I should have clarified that I am a Wolfpack fan, so I hate both Duke and UNC. In some ways, this is convenient; you can be accepted by fans of either franchise by displaying the correct hatreds. But man, it sure would be nice to win some games now and then.

The situation is similiar here. You have to either hate SC or UCLA. I don't really have strong feelings eitherway and vastly prefer either of their fanbases to the Lakers (which encapsulates pretty much everyone.) Between USC's football dynasty, Laker's current dominance, old Raider fans etc., I think SoCal has fans that can rival any other area for obnoxiousness. And I lived in Boston and Philly so that's saying alot. Dodger fans are about the only ones I can tolerate.

I don't think much of either. I root for them against the rest of the world out of some strange sense of local loyalty and I root for USC when they play each other just because I lived with a USC grad for a while and went to a lot of really boring football games (which were fun for her since the reason she had the season tix was to stay in touch with her college friends). I do know that it is really a useful career builder here in socal to play the game. You don't have to be one or the other to get ahead but it helps to be part of the rivalry among certain cliques.